H673
901.9
History and hope
71-17354
EAKPE.
TTTT
HISTORY AND HOPE
CONTRIBUTORS
Kathleen Bliss, A.K. Brohi
Pieter Geyl, Jeanne Hersch
Sidney Hook, Albert Hourani
Theodor Litt, Richard Lowenthal
Herbert Liithy, Salvador de Madariaga
Ehsan Naraghi, Jayaprakash Narayan
Robert Oppenheimer, Joseph Pieper
Michael Polanyi, Raja Rao
Ronald Segal, Michio Takeyama
and others
HISTORY
AND HOPE
TRADITION, IDEOLOGY, AND CHANGE
IN MODERN SOCIETY
Edited by
K. A. Jelenski
With a Postscript by
Michael Polanyi
Essay Index Reprint Series
t
BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS
FREEPORT, NEW YORK
Copyright 1962 Congress for Cultural Freedom
All rights reserved
Reprinted 1970 by arrangement with Praeger Publishers, Inc.
INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER:
0-8369-1794-4
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER;
70-117773
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
Introduction by K. A. JELENSKI page I
PART I. Beyond the Ideological Passions?
Beyond Nihilism MICHAEL POLANYI 17
Messianism, Nihilism and the Future RICHARD LOWENTHAL 37
Enlightenment and Radicalism SIDNEY HOOK 59
Criticism and Discussion 69
MICHAEL POLANYI, PAUL IGNOTUS , K. A. JELENSKI, FRANCOIS
FEJTO, HANS KOHN, SALVADOR DE MADARIAGA, PIETER
GEYL, MICHIO TAKEYAMA, THEODOR LITT
PART II. Prospects for a New Civility
A Rehabilitation of Nationalism? HERBERT LUTHY 85
Revolutionary Nationalism ALBERT HOURANT 101
Criticism and Discussion 109
HERBERT LUTHY, ALBERT HOURANI, HANS KOHN,
WALTHER HOFER, A. K. BROHI, PIETER GEYL, HUGH
SETON-WATSON, JEANNE HERSCH, CZESLAW MILOSZ,
EHSAN NARAGHI, ALTIERO SPINELLI, FRANCOIS BONDY,
THEODOR LITT, FRODE JAKOBSEN, RICHARD LOWENTHAL,
SIDNEY HOOK
The Role of Religion in the Pursuit of Freedom 141
KATHLEEN BLISS
Christian Values and Freedom JOSEPH PIEPER 145
Criticism and Discussion 149
KATHLEEN BLISS, RICHARD HENSMAN, HELMUT GOLL-
WITZER, JAYAPRAKASH NARAYAN, SIDNEY HOOK, INGEMAR
HEDENIUS, KARL LOEWITH, ENZO BOERI, ROBERT
OPPENHEIMER, ALEX WEISSBERG, RONALD SEGAL, HUGH
SETON-WATSON
V t *v. * I \~*<y~ m
_ 6 J I / 0*3 *
tw? t *p,& ^^i fRjrn
Contents
Some Philosophical Remarks concerning the Contem-
porary World JEANNE HERSCH 165
Critisicm and Discussion 177
ROBERT OPPENHEIMER, SIDNEY HOOK, RAJA RAO, JEANNE
HERSCH
A PostScript MICHAEL POLANYI 185
Biographical Notes 197
Index 201
VI
Introduction
K. A. JELENSKI
THE last decade witnessed a growing awareness In Europe
of the exhaustion of the nineteenth-century ideologies.
Two chains of events lie behind this important change.
One is formed by the catastrophes and delusions of the earlier
two decades, the years between 1930 and 1950, which brought
about a decline of millenarian doctrines. The other Is connected
with the rise of the Welfare State, with the modifications of
capitalism, the matter-of-fact fulfilment of some of the aims
of socialism, and with a growing realization that the realities of
industrialism are perhaps a more Important determining factor
socially than political systems, whatever their Ideological origin.
The Berlin Conference of 1960, held on the tenth anniversary
of the foundation of the Congress for Cultural Freedom,
brought together more than two hundred scholars, writers and
intellectuals in discussions on the principal problems of this
decade, under the central theme of 'Tradition and Change'.
While other study groups at the Berlin conference were con-
cerned with the political, sociological and cultural aspects of
this theme, the seminar directed by Professor Michael Polanyl
was devoted to the 'Progress of Ideas'. History and Hope con-
tains the papers presented at this seminar and excerpts from the
discussion which followed.
Professor Polanyi's Introductory paper, 'Beyond Nihilism*,
contains a challenging and hopeful view of the Ideological
evolution of our time. Polanyl considers the revisionist move-
ment which manifested itself in Poland and In Hungary from
1954 onwards, and which culminated in the Polish October of
1956 and in the Hungarian revolution as an historical landmark
equal in importance to the French Revolution. Indeed, In
Polanyi's Interpretation, 'revisionism' is not merely the neo-
Marxist reaction to Stalinist totalitarianism set in motion by
1
K. A. Jelenski
young Polish and Hungarian Communists, but, in a much
wider sense, a reflection in the West as well as in the Com-
munist world of the receding influence of the chiliastic ideolo-
gies on intellectuals,, and on public opinion in general.
'Beyond Nihilism' is a study of the rising tide of this 'moral
inversion' which Polanyi associates with modern ideologies ; of
its recession ; and of the new landmarks (which are perhaps but
new forms of old ones), which this recession uncovers. Among
these landmarks, Polanyi recognizes *a reawakened national
feeling 9 , *a new alliance between liberalism and religious
beliefs', and a new lease of life given to the sceptical mood of
the enlightenment itself.
There is a genuine possibility by which men may discover an
avenue which will not lead back into nihilism :
'Perhaps the present recoil may be stabilized by the upsurge
of a more clear-sighted political conscience. We might con-
ceivably achieve a kind of suspended logic, like that which kept
England and America so happily backward on the road to
disaster. . . . Civility prevailed in England over religious strife
and a society was founded which was dynamic and yet united.
May not Europe repeat this feat? May we not learn from the
disaster of the last forty years to establish a civic partnership,
united in its resolve on continuous reforms our dynamism
restrained by the knowledge that radicalism will throw us back
into disaster the moment we try to act out its principles lit-
erally?'
Polanyi's essay served to guide much of the subsequent
course of the discussion. His thesis that both Communism and
Nazism are two forms of modem nihilistic fanaticism which he
sees as a perverted consequence of the Enlightenment, was criti-
cized by Richard Lowenthal who insisted on essential differ-
ences between Marx and his followers on the one hand, and
Fascists and National Socialists on the other, and by Sidney
Hook who refused to see in the Enlightenment anything else
than the origin of modern rationalism.
Three major themes raised in the ensuing discussion were :
1. The ideological, social and historical origins of the two
great 'secular fanaticisms' of our time: Communism and
Fascism ; their similarities and differences.
2. The declaration of the end of ideology, and, as evidence :
the revisionism in Europe, the exhaustion of ideological interest
2
Introduction
in the Western world, the erosion or routinization of ideological
fervour in post-Stalinist Soviet Russia.
3. The prospects for a post-authoritarian, non-ideological
society of the future, for what Polanyi calls 'a new civility':
Does this envisage a return to a progressive, reformist liberal
society, with a pragmatic attitude toward public affairs? Or
does it imply a reaffirmation of pre-Enlightenment values,
characteristic of traditional societies : national feeling, religious
belief?
/. The Secular Fanaticisms of our Time
Before the Age of Enlightenment, societies did not nourish
the secular design of transforming society fundamentally or of
achieving social perfection, while after the Age of Enlightenment
societies tended to become dynamic, obsessed with the concept
of progress and change, and intent on achieving the goals of
perfection 'here and now'. #
What are the intellectual conditions under which both com-
munism and fascism have gained power over the minds of men?
Michael Polanyi has emphasized secularization itself Man's
attempt to conceive the meaning of life in this world in im-
manent terms. Richard Lowenthal stressed a different con-
dition : the emergence of the democratic concept in the broadest
sense of the word, the idea that the political and social order
could be no longer regarded as God-given and must derive its
sanction from the will of the people. "All totalitarian ideologies
[says Lowenthal] are based on the fiction that the totalitarian
movement represents the true will of the people, the volonte gene-
rale in Rousseau's sense.' And he adds: 'The very idea of a
totalitarian political movement gaining power and then con-
tinuing to mobilize the masses for the purposes of its regime is
only conceivable in an age where a democratic legitimation has
become indispensable for every regime.'
Lowenthal mentions two other major intellectual conditions
for the rise of the revolutionary historical myths : the conscious
experience of historic change and the confidence, engendered
by the progress of science, in the scientific predictability of the
natural order, which is then extended to the field of history.
Thus, secularization, the democratic principle of legitimacy,
the experience of historic change and the belief in its scientific
predictability, which are all implicit in the intellectual revolution
3
K. A. Jelenski
of the Age of Enlightenment, form the Indispensable back-
ground to the totalitarian ideologies of our time. But they also
form the general intellectual background, since the end of the
eighteenth century, to the new 'dynamic' societies of today.
At another seminar organized by the Congress for Cultural
Freedom at Rheinfelden, near Basle, in 1959, Michael Polanyi
made a distinction between two kinds of contemporary dynamic
society : the reformist, progressive society, and the totalitarian
society :
6 What opposes these two types of dynamic societies, Is their
attitude towards human nature, the nature of truth, their ideas
about human goodness, honesty, etc. Progressive society has no
reason to distrust these Ideas, since it lets Itself be guided, little
by little, by their manifestations which it considers as authentic
factors for the amelioration of society. Totalitarian society Is
much more Influenced by the union of science as a guide to
reality with Messianic aims and I think its relation tov/ards
ideas is fundamentally inverted . . .'
This statement contains an Implication of the thesis Polanyi
develops in 'Beyond Nihilism' :
'I believe [he says] that never In the history of mankind has
the hunger for brotherhood and righteousness exercised such
power over the minds of men as today. The past two centuries
have not been an age of moral weakness, but have, on the con-
trary, seen outbreaks of a moral fervour which has achieved
numberless humanitarian reforms and has improved modern
society beyond the boldest thought of earlier centuries. And I
believe that it Is this fervour which In our own lifetime has out-
reached Itself by its inordinate aspirations and thus heaped on
mankind the disasters that have befallen us ... We have yet to
discover the proper terms for describing this event. Ethics must
catch up with the pathological forms of morals due to the mod-
ern Intensification of morality. We must learn to recognize moral
excesses.'
But, even if elements of 'moral inversion' were implicitly
present in the secular urge towards perfection which first mani-
fested itself in the Age of Enlightenment, the fact still remains
that the same intellectual background gave birth to two different
kinds of modern societies the reformist and the totalitarian.
Participants of the study-group sought specific causes of the rise
of totalitarianism : religious, sociological, historical.
4
Introduction
One of the implications of secularization, the transfer of the
religious urge to problems of this world, was particularly
stressed. J. L. Talmon, author of The Origins of Totalitarian
Democracy, thus underlined the c para-religious' character of
political Messianism at the seminar of Rheinfelden: 'The
principal characteristic of Messianic thinkers and theoreticians*
from Rousseau to Marx, passing through Saint-Simon, Fourier
and others, is that each one of them finds it absolutely necessary
to begin his research and to continue it through a reglement de
comptes with religion. They are all entirely, I would say aggres-
sively, conscious of offering a substitute to religion.'
Following this line of argument, Richard Lowenthal attaches
particular importance to the secularization of the religious hope
of the Millennium : 'There is more than "moral passion" in an
elaborate system that tells us that mankind started in a state of
innocence (state of nature, primitive Communism), was cor-
rupted by ambition and avarice (class society, state, exploita-
tion) and will eventually enter a realm of perfect justice where
all sin (oppression, exploitation, rivalry) and conflict will
disappear and no compulsion will be needed : this is a sacred
history and a promise of salvation on earth.' We are here faced
with a modem version of the chiliastic heresies of the Middle
Ages. Lowenthal goes on to show that Nazi doctrine is just such
a perverted reflection of miilenarianism : 'The formal structure
of their vision of history showed the same origin in the tripartite
apocalyptic scheme as that of their Marxist antipodes, with
biology replacing economics as the master-key to history, the
state of innocence identified with racial purity and the fall with
the bastardization of the fallen race.' But its spiritual model is
to be found not in chiliastic, but in antinomian and satanistic
heresies : 'those which sought to escape from the burden of guilt
and moral conflict in the doctrine that every "sin" was per-
mitted to the Elect, and that the ability to commit deeds which
to others v/ere deadly sin without a sense of guilt was the very
proof of election'.
Richard Lowenthal also developed in his paper what he
called the 'dynamic' causes for the rise of totalitarianism, which
can be described as the collapse of traditional authority in a
society where rules of conduct are dependent on external
authority both for their preservation and their gradual adjust-
ment to changing conditions.
5
K. A. Jelenski
Sidney Hook, however, rejected the entire set of presupposi-
tions in the arguments of Polanyi and Lowenthal: 'The chief
causes of the Bolshevik and Nazi revolutions have very little to
do with doctrinal beliefs. They are to be found in the First
World War and its consequences. Not 1789 but 1914 deserves
the title of the Year of the Second Fall of Man.'
A considerable part of the discussion was concerned with
doing away with a misunderstanding which arose out of Pol-
anyi's interpretation of Communism and Nazism as two forms
of moral nihilistic inversion. Certainly the totalitarianism of the
left and the totalitarianism of the right are two different kinds of
revolt against the hypocrisy of the old order. And certainly the
manifestations of both were similarly callous and cruel. But
while Marx and Ms followers attacked 'bourgeois morality 9 as
hypocritical, they attacked it from the basis of its own professed
universal values : of the Judaeo-Christian and liberal-humanist
tradition. In fact, the revisionist 'revolution' was a reaction
against a new hypocrisy, undertaken in the defence of values
which the Communists still professed in doctrine while disre-
garding them in practice. Fascists and National Socialists, on
the other hand, start from a similar disgust with the old order,
but they conclude that these values themselves are false and
should be replaced by an 'honest' cult of the stronger, the
ennobling qualities of violence and the rejection of all traditional
moral restraints in principle.
Whatever the differences of theory, however, Theodor Litf s
testimony of his own experiences under Nazism and under
Communism in Eastern Germany demonstrated the existence
in both of the same mixture of the rational and the irrational, of
'exasperated moral passion' and nihilism which Polanyi diag-
nosed in his paper.
//. The End of the Ideological Age?
However much disagreement there was as to their causes,
there was considerable agreement that evidence of the end of
ideologies does exist.
Let us first examine Polish and Hungarian revisionism and
Polanyi's implication that revisionism is tied to a revival of
national and religious feeling.
If by 'revisionism' we understand the voice of the pays reel
6
Introduction
which first expressed itself after years of repression and silence^
then Polanyi's contention is right: events in Poland and in
Hungary showed that nationalism and religion are still strong.
But if we consider 'revisionism' in its strict terms, if we apply it
only to the Polish and Hungarian Communist writers, philo-
sophers, intellectuals who revolted against the discrepancy
between the professed humanistic values and the inhuman
totalitarian practice of the regime, then the return to patriotic
and religious values is far less evident. Polish revisionists re-
discovered the crucial fact which degraded Marxism into the
Communist totalitarian ideology this was Lenin's 1902 dogma
of 'democratic centralism', of the identification of 'the Prole-
tariat' with 'the Party' which must at all costs preserve total
power. These revisionists were returning to the ideas of Rosa
Luxemburg, under whose influence the Polish Communist Party
had been originally formed, of 'Workers' Democracy' and of
internationalism. These ideas were overtly stressed in numerous
essays which appeared in Po Prostu, the magazine of the youth-
ful Polish revisionists. While they could never say so directly,
Polish revisionists often implied that Poland's independence
from the Soviet Union was to be defended not merely on
'patriotic' grounds, but in order to form a sort of 'bridgehead*
of new internationalism.
The attitude of Polish revisionists towards religion had an
ambiguous character, and does not entirely justify Polanyi's
claim that 'another revisionist idea lay in the newly-found
alliance between liberalism and religious beliefs'. Polish re-
visionists were virulent anticlericals. But they rightly perceived
that religious persecution had greatly strengthened the position
of the Catholic Church in Poland. They called for religious
tolerance not out of any sympathy for religion, but because (a)
they considered Stalinism the worst form of clericalism and (b)
they did in fact return to many ideas of the Age of Enlighten-
ment, and briefly regained faith in the force of reason. But
Polish revisionists became gradually aware of their inefficacy.
Their attempt to re-think Communism in genuinely Marxist
terms, their desire to see how one could bring about a true Com-
munist society in contrast to the monstrosities of Stalinism,
were short-lived. Most revisionists became disillusioned and
sceptical. The majority has probably arrived at what one might
call approximately 'social democratic' conclusions. Most of
7
K. A. Jeknski
them share the hope, widespread in the West, that the trans-
formation of the Soviet Union into an industrial society will
make it possible to arrive at some equivalent of a democratic
welfare state. A small minority has come to consider that
traditional values such as the nation or religious beliefs are the
only effective bulwarks against modern totalitarianism. It may
be that Polanyi's conclusions apply to this minority only and
that this minority turned to pragmatic traditionalism after 1957,
that is as a consequence of the apparent failure of their revi-
sionist movement. But this may be a problem of vocabulary :
one can, as in the foregoing, interpret 'revisionism' in the
narrow sense of the neo-Marxist thought which manifested itself
in the Communist bloc between 1954 and 1957, and which since
has been silenced.
One thing is certain : The Polish and Hungarian revisionists
refused to sacrifice the present of mankind for a promised
tomorrow; as a result of their experience with that 'future',
they did assert the claims of humanism.
As the foremost Polish revisionist philosopher Leszek Kola-
kowski put it :
C I shall never believe that the moral and intellectual life of
mankind conforms to the laws of economic Investments, that Is,
that one should expect better results tomorrow by saving today,
I.e. use lies for the triumph of truth and take advantage of crime
in order to pave the way for righteousness.'
The evidence pointing to the end of Ideologies in the West has
been reduced by most speakers to the visible exhaustion of
ideological Interest In the post-war Western world, and par-
ticularly among the young generations. But since we are here
concerned with ideas and with the intellectuals who have been
the bearers of Ideologies, the existence of small revisionist
groups in the West may be relevant. Like Po Prostu or the
Irodalmi Ujsag of 1956 in Poland and Hungary, the English
New Left Review, the French Arguments., the American Dissent
have obviously abandoned the doctrinaire interpretation of
orthodox Marxism and have in common a search for a new
socialist humanism. Surely It Is significant that the most radical
young intellectuals in the West seem to have lost a Messianic
faith in the proletariat and do not even strike out with any self-
assurance against 'the capitalists' or 'the bourgeoisie'. The new
target of their criticism Is rather the amorphous 'mass society*,
8
Introduction
which they attack In the language of early Marx, particularly in
terms of alienation.
Indeed, what may account for the changed temper of even
the most dissatisfied elements of Western contemporary intelli-
gentsia, is that their discontent is expressed within the frame-
work of a highly organized industrial society, in which the terms
of the class straggle, as laid down by Marx, have lost much of
their relevance. Western revisionists may refuse to see that the
socio-economic mutation of the societies in which they live
can be interpreted in marxist terms as realising some of Marx's
own hopes, although not along the lines of his prophecies;
that class division can one day be abolished not through the
victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, but by both of
them merging in a 'mass society'. But even if some of them
continue to reject this interpretation of contemporary changes,
they no longer believe in a proletarian revolution which will
bring about the Millennium. The most stubborn Manicheans
among them now tend to identify themselves with the former
colonial peoples, who, in their view have inherited revolu-
tionary dynamics previously attributed to the proletariat.
What seems certain, however, is that the image of the Millen-
nium has generally lost its sway and so has the feeling that all
means are acceptable if in the long run they will bring it about.
If there is no certitude about what is the ultimate image of the
new society, pragmatic compromise begins anew to be con-
sidered as the least of all evils.
What Karl Popper calls 'piecemeal social engineering', the
matter-of-fact, immediate problems of standard of living,
education, etc., does, in fact, function in the West. As Michael
Polanyi has pointed out in his paper, c the more sober, prag-
matist attitude towards public affairs which has spread since
1950 through England and America, Germany and Austria,
reproduces in its repudiation of ideological strife the attitude of
Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists towards religious bigotry'.
But this perspective on society and politics is not exciting for
intellectuals.
The young generation in the West has often been described as
sober, matter-of-fact, having a 'mature' acceptance of politics
and existence ; but also as having an underlying restlessness, a
feeling of being cheated out of an adventure, and a search for
passion. They would probably agree with Max Weber that 'he
9
K. A. Jelenski
who seeks the salvation of souls, his own as well as others,
should not seek it along the avenue of polities'. But where
then, if at all, if he must, does contemporary man seek Ms
'salvation'? The irrational implications of this question may be
decisive for the prospects of the post-authoritarian, post-ideo-
logical society evoked in Professor Polanyi's paper.
Can we speak of 'the end of ideology' in relation to the
newly-emancipated 'underdeveloped countries', on whose
evolution, in the long run, the future of our world may depend?
Michael Polanyi said that the new intellectual movement which
he connects with the Hungarian Revolution has, in less dramatic
forms, 'spread all through the area of receding dynamism,
almost everywhere outside Communist China'. He thinks that
the 're-awakened national feeling rejuvenated the ancient
societies of Asia and Africa, creating, along with much wasteful
strife, new popular communities which transcend the ideological
conflicts of European dynamism'.
The exception was stressed by Richard Lowenthal when he
said 'Chinese Communism achieved total domination of a
potential Great Power in 1949 after more than twenty years of
civil war at a time when, in Polanyi's view, the ideological age
was already on its way out and has shown an unexampled
ideological virulence in recent years.'
As for the other rising States of Asia and Africa, it can be
argued that they are fashioning new ideologies with a specific
appeal for their own people, industrialization, modernization,
race, Pan-Arabism and nationalism which have a distant
relationship to the old nineteenth-century ideologies which
have become exhausted in the West. This relationship, accord-
ing to J. L. Talmon (Seminar of Rheinfelden), rests on the fact
that in Asia and Africa we are confronted with a new form of
political Messianism. The nineteenth-century European version
of political Messianism combined two postulates, according to
Talmon : the desire to combat all alienation, and on the other
hand the desire for cohesion, for organization. The differences
of religious, spiritual, intellectual and political traditions in the
West and in the new States of Asia and Africa lead Talmon to
question the results of this 'transplantation' of a new form of
political Messianism to other civilizations: 'Will they not be
reduced to adopt its organizational aspect only, a sort of instru-
ment to construct immense power-machines, while abandoning
10
Introduction
its prophetic disquiet, its prophetic mission? In this case, if we
bear In mind that in the long run nationalistic particularities
have proved more powerful, infinitely stronger than Messianic
universalism, could we not fear that in adopting this sort of
organizational Messianisin, these civilizations, if they really
neglect the prophetic tradition, may transform Messianism into
a mere lever to construct instruments of power to extol their
unique character, their differences, and to reject Western
civilization, guilty of so much oppression in the past?'
///. Prospects for a Post-Ideological Society
Whatever particular objections and doubts were raised by
some participants of the study-group, the moral and intellectual
temper of the fifties at least in Europe and North America
clearly indicates the abatement of nineteenth-century ideologies.
The importance of Polanyi's challenge consists in the fact that
he wishes to look beyond and study the next stage of the
historical process in which we are involved.
At the Rheinfelden Seminar Polanyi mentioned another
possible direction in which a post-authoritarian, post-ideolog-
ical society might move: 'There is absolutely no reason for
rejecting the eventualities of the replacement of modern fana-
tical societies, and of the corruption they bring about, by a
reformist society.'
'Revisionism' might thus entail a return to a pre-Enlighten-
ment view of the world (religion, nationalism), in fact to some
degree to what Polanyi called an 'ancient and static society'
But it might also entail a return to a conception of a reformist,
progressive, liberal society which we owe to the Enlightenment.
Both these prospects were discussed by the study-group.
Herbert Liithy pointed out the ambiguity of nationalism in
Polanyi's paper 'once as a fanatic ideology, another time as a
form of hope'. He went on to warn against the latter approach :
'In recent years' he says 'Titoism, the East German rising
of 1953, the Hungarian and Polish revolutions of 1956, the
Tibetan rising and similar events have led to a kind of rehabili-
tation of nationalism in Western thought. This is, in the first
instance, merely an expression of relief at the fact that the Soviet
system is also having trouble with nationalistic reactions, and of
the understandable sympathy with every form of reaction to an
B 11
K. A. Jelenski
equally brutal and deceitful despotism. Yet I nevertheless con-
sider it important that we should not develop a double-minded-
ness with regard to a pathological phenomenon which, when it
appears in the West, we regard as a plague, but of which, when it
breaks out in the Communist Empire, we approve simply
because it causes disquiet to the Communist rulers behind the
Iron Curtain.'
Are we then to count nationalism among those manifestations
of revisionism which could lead us beyond ideological religions
towards a peaceful, tolerant and equilibrated society? Liithy
thinks our answer to this question should take into account two
series of events : the fight for independence of the ex-colonial
peoples and the awakening of nationalism in the Communist
sphere of influence.
All the participants of the seminar expressed their unequi-
vocal approval of the new independence movements in Asia and
Africa. However, to what extent is our knowledge of European
nationalism of any use in the effort to estimate the exact signi-
ficance of other, non-European nationalisms? An answer to this
question is important if we are to take the just measure of the
vast revolution going on in the greater part of the world today.
As for the nationalist revival in the Eastern European revolu-
tions, it was not their aim to establish a specifically Polish or
Hungarian social order : it was a search for a new form of a just
and free society. 'That this fight should have taken a nation-
alistic colour' [says Liithy] 'is understandable, because every
historic fight is taking place not in a no-man's-land of abstract
humanity, but in the given framework of state institutions, of
institutional possibilities inherent in political strife.' The
demand for autonomy by cultural, religious, or even simply
regional communities, for individual freedom of thought and
behaviour permitting individuals as well as historical and social
groups to breathe and develop freely, is not in essence nation-
alistic. In Liithy's words: 'If we repudiate nationalism as a
doctrine, as a principle of integration, this does not mean that
any particular community has no right to live, but, on the
contrary, that this right should be fully acknowledged.' Liithy's
solution to this problem, which was shared by Jeanne Hersch
and other participants, is a federal and supra-national one:
'Today the Western world is beginning slowly and unwillingly
to feel its way towards both pluralistic and supra-national forms
12
Introduction
of organization. There Is as yet no indication of a definite suc-
cess in this direction. Yet it is my firm conviction that no other
method has any future, and that retreat would be catastrophic.'
It is characteristic that none of the contributors to this
seminar seem to recognize the relevance of ideological and
political categories of the last century, such as Left and Right,
liberal and socialist, revolutionary and traditionalist. The con-
flicts which these categories imply have either become reconciled
by experience or else so entangled that they can be detected in
every camp. Didn't Stalin deplore in 1952 his followers' belief
that the 'objective laws of economies' that is the laws of the
market could be rendered invalid under socialism? Didn't the
general acceptance in the West of the Keynesian model render
the liberal theory of economic self-adjustment invalid? Can one
describe as 'extreme left' the Soviet regime which identifies
society with the State? What is the right ideological or political
term for the new regimes of Asia and Africa which have had
such an important bearing on the discussion?
To the new problems which are facing us today on a uni-
versal scale, a new approach is needed. The Berlin Conference
was an attempt by philosophers, writers and scholars of four
continents, united by a common bond of attachment to freedom,
to find a new approach.
13
PARTI
Beyond the Ideological Passions ?
Beyond Nihilism
MICHAEL POLANYI
WE are told that moral improvement has not kept pace
with the advance of science, and that the troubles of
our age are largely due to this disparity. I shall argue
that this view is false, or at least profoundly misleading. For I
believe that never in the history of mankind has the hunger for
brotherhood and righteousness exercised such power over the
minds of men as today. The past two centuries have not been an
age of moral weakness, but have, on the contrary, seen the out-
break of a moral fervour which has achieved numberless human-
itarian reforms and has improved modern society beyond the
boldest thoughts of earlier centuries. And I believe that it is this
fervour which in our own lifetime has outreached itself by its
inordinate aspirations and thus heaped on mankind the disasters
that have befallen us. I admit that these disasters were accom-
panied by moral depravation. But I deny that this justifies us in
speaking of moral retardation. What sluggish river has ever
broken the dams which contained it or smashed the wheels
which harnessed it? We have yet to discover the proper terms
for describing this event. Ethics must catch up with the patho-
logical forms of morals due to the modern intensification of
morality. We must learn to recognize moral excesses.
I shall suggest that modern nihilism is a moral excess from
which we are suffering today. And I shall try to look past this
stage and see whether there is in fact anything beyond it. For
our passion for nihilistic self-doubt may be incurable, and it may
come to an end only when it has finally destroyed our civiliza-
tion.
To speak of moral passions is something new. The idea that
morality consists in imposing on ourselves the curb of moral
commands, is so ingrained in us, that we simply cannot see that
17
Michael Polanyi
the moral need of our time is, on the contrary, to curb our
inordinate moral demands, which precipitate us into moral
degradation and threaten us with bodily destruction.
There is admittedly one ancient record of moral admonitions
which are outbreaks of moral passions : the sermons of the
Hebrew prophets. I might have disregarded these since their
fulminations were fired by religious zeal and the religious zeal
of Judaeo-Christianity is not primarily moral. But these prophetic
utterances are relevant here because their Messianism, rein-
forced by the apocalyptic messages of the New Testament, gave
rise in the late Middle Ages and after, to a series of chiliastic out-
bursts in which the inversion of moral passions into nihilism
made its first appearance.
This has been followed up recently by Norman Cohn in The
Pursuit of the Millennium. He shows that the initial impetus to the
repeated Messianic rebellions, which occurred in Central
Europe from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries was given by
the great moral reforms of Gregory VII. His violent resolve to
purge the Church of simony, to prohibit the marriage of the
clergy and enforce their chastity retrieved the Church from
imminent decay, but it did so at the cost of inciting the populace
to rebellion against the clergy. These rebellions were both
religious and moral. Their master ideas could be conceived only
in a Christian society, for they assailed the spiritual rulers of
society for offending against their own teachings. Rulers who
did not preach Christian ideals could not be attacked in these
terms. 1
Since no society can live up to Christian precepts, any society
professing Christian precepts must be afflicted by an internal
contradiction, and when the tension is released by rebellion its
agents must tend to establish a nihilist Messianic rule. For a
victorious rising will create a new centre of power, and as the
rising had been motivated by Christian morality, the new centre
will be beset by the same contradiction against which its sup-
porters had risen in rebellion. It will, indeed, be in a worse
position, for its internal balance will not be protected by any
customary compromise. It can then hold on only by proclaiming
1 1 am concerned here only with risings proclaiming moral principles which
the existing rulers profess, and are accused of failing to observe. This does not
apply generally to outbursts of millenarism among primitive people. Even so, such
movements are most frequently induced by the teachings of Christian mission-
aries. (See Peter Worsley, The Trumpet Sounds, London 1957, p. 245.)
18
Beyond Nihilism
itself to be the absolute good : a Second Coming greater than the
first and placed therefore beyond good and evil. We see arising
then the 'moral superman', whom Norman Cohn compares
with the 'armed bohemians' of our days, the followers of
Bakunin and Nietzsche. For the first time the excesses of
Christian morality turned here into fierce immoralism.
But these events were but scattered prodromal signs. The full
power of the disturbance which had caused them became mani-
fest only after the secularization of Europe in the eighteenth
century. This change was neither sudden nor complete: but
secularization was broadly completed in half a century. It was
decisively advanced by the new scientific outlook ; the victory of
Voltaire over Bossuet was the triumph of Newton, even though
Newton might not have wanted it. The scientific revolution sup-
plied the supreme axiom of eighteenth-century rationalism, the
rejection of all authority ; Nullius in Verba had been the motto of
the Royal Society at its foundation in 1660. Science served also
as a major example for emancipating knowledge from religious
dogma.
The new world view was expected to set man free to follow
the natural light of reason, and thus to put an end to religious
fanaticism and bigotry which were deemed the worst mis-
fortunes of mankind. Humanity would advance then peacefully
towards ever higher intellectual, moral, political and economic
perfection. But already quite early in the development of this
perspective almost forty years before universal progress was
first envisaged by Condorcet Rousseau had challenged its
hopes in his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750) and Dis-
course on Inequality (1754). He declared that civilized man was
morally degenerate, for he lives only outside himself, by the
good opinion of others. He was a 'hollow man', an 'other
directed person', to use terms coined two centuries later.
Rousseau actually attributed this degeneration 'to the progress
of the human mind', which had produced inequalities and
consolidated them by the establishment of property. Man's
original virtue had thus been corrupted and his person enslaved.
Here is moral fury attacking all that is of good repute : all
accepted manners, custom and law ; exalting instead a golden
age which was before good and evil.
Admittedly, his fervent dedication of the Discourse on In-
equality to the city of Geneva shows that Rousseau's text was
19
Michael Polanyi
vastly hyperbolic. Yet by Ms argument and rhetoric he poured
into the channels of rationalism a fierce passion for humanity.
His thought so widened these channels that they could be
fraught eventually with all the supreme hopes of Christianity,
the hopes which rationalism had released from their dogmatic
framework. But for this infusion of Christian fervour., Voltaire's
vision of mankind purged of its follies and settling down to
cultivate its garden might have come true ; and Gibbon's nos-
talgia for a civilization restored to its antique dispassion might
have been satisfied. However, the legacy of Christ blighted these
complacent hopes ; it had other tasks in store for humanity. So
it came that the philosopher not only failed to establish an age of
quiet enjoyment, but induced instead a violent tide of secular
dynamism. And that while this tide was to spread many benefits
on humanity, nobler than any that the philosophes had ever
aimed at, it also degenerated in many places into a fanaticism
fiercer than the religious furies which their teachings had
appeased. So even before the principles of scientific rationalism
had been fully formulated, Rousseau had conjured up the
extrapolation of these principles to the kind of secular fana-
ticism which was actually to result from them.
And he went further. Having anticipated the passions of the
European revolution without himself intending any revolution,
he anticipated even its sequel which was never intended and
indeed abhorred by most of those who were to become its
actual agents. He realized that an aggregate of unbridled indi-
viduals could form only a totally collectivized political body.
For such individuals could be governed only by their own wills
and any governmental will formed and justified by them would
itself necessarily be unbridled. Such a government could not
submit to a superior jurisdiction any conflict arising between
itself and its citizens. 1 This argument is the same which led
Hobbes to justify an absolutist government on the grounds of
an unbridled individualism, and the procedure Rousseau sug-
gested for establishing this absolutism was also the same as
postulated by Hobbes. It was construed as a free gift of all
individual wills to the will of the sovereign, under the seal of a
Social Contract, the sovereign being established in both cases as
the sole arbiter of the contract between the citizens and itself.
The congruence between the conclusions derived from an
1 Rousseau, Contrat Social I, ch. VI.
20
Beyond Nihilism
absolute individualism, both by Hobbes who had set out to
justify absolutism and Rousseau who hoped to vindicate liberty,
testifies to the logical cogency of their argument. It suggests that
when revolutions demanding total individual liberty were to
lead to the establishment of a coilectivist absolutism,, these
implications were actually at work in the process.
Meanwhile this logic was still only on paper, and even on
paper the tyrannical consequences of Ms position were some-
times vigorously denied by Rousseau himself. The predominant
opinion of the Enlightenment certainly opposed both the
premises and the conclusions of Rousseau, and continued
confidently to pursue the prospects of free and reasonable men
in search of individual happiness, under a government to which
they would grant only enough power to protect the citizens from
encroachments by their fellow citizens and by foreign enemies.
The logic of Hobbes and Rousseau was suspended by disregard-
iag the question as to who would arbitrate between the govern-
ment and the citizens. Fascinated by the examples of British
parliamentary government, political philosophy was ready to
accept the current maxims of British success. It was not Rous-
seau but Locke, therefore, whose teachings triumphed in the first
revolution, which was to be American and not French. And it
was still Locke whose diction prevailed in the Declaration of the
Rights of Man at the beginning of the French Revolution.
By that time, however, the secularization of the most active
minds of Europe and America had advanced nearly to comple-
tion and the rising stream of Christian aspirations, emerging
from its shattered dogmatic precincts, was effectively entering
the field of public life. The French Revolution and the collateral
movements of reform in all the countries of Europe brought to
an end a political state common to mankind for a hundred
thousand years from the beginnings of human society. All dur-
ing these immemorial ages throughout their myriad tribes and
numerous civilizations men had accepted existing custom and
law as the foundation of society. There had been great reform,
but never before had the deliberate contriving of unlimited
social improvement been elevated to a dominant principle. The
French Revolution marks the dividing line between the immense
expanse of essential static societies and the narrow strip of time
over which our modern experience of social dynamism had so
far extended,
21
Michael Polanyi
Little did the great rationalists realize the transformation they
were engendering. Voltaire wrote that not all the works of
philosophers would cause even as much strife as the quarrel
about the length of sleeves to be worn by Franciscan monks had
excited. He did not suspect that the spirit of St. Francis himself
would enter into the teachings of the philosophers and set the
world ablaze with their arguments. And even remoter beyond
this horizon lay the fact that rationalism, thus inflamed, would
transform the emotional personality of man. Yet this is what
followed. Man's consciousness of himself as a sovereign indi-
vidual evoked that comprehensive movement of thought and
feeling now known as romanticism. Of this great and fruitful
germination I shall pick out only the strand which leads on from
Rousseau's exaltation of uncivilized man who, like Adam and
Eve before the Fall, has yet no knowledge of good and evil.
The scorn which Rousseau had poured on all existing society
presently found vent in Ms defiant assertion of Ms own indi-
viduality. His Confessions were to show a man in the starkness
of nature, and that man would be himself, whom no other man
resembles. His lowest vices would be exposed and thrown as a
gauntlet at the face of the world. The reader shall judge, wrote
he, 'whether nature was right in smashing the mould into wMch
she had cast me'.
TMs is modern immoralism. Rascals had written their lives
before and had shamelessly told of their exploits. The wrong-
doings which a Benvenuto Cellini or a Boswell related in their
memoirs exceed those of Rousseau, and their authors showed
no compunction. Yet they were not immoralists. For they did
not proclaim their vices to the world in order to denounce the
world's hypocrisy, but merely to tell a good story.
When Thucydides acknowledged that national interests over-
rule moral standards in dealings between city states, he declared
this as a bitter truth. Machiavelli reasserted this teacMng and
expanded it by authorizing the prince to over-ride all moral
constraints in consolidating Ms own power. And later, MacMa-
vellism was to develop into the doctrine of Staatsraison,
exercising a steady influence on modern rulers and contributing
greatly to the formation of modern states. TMs Realpolitik
culminated in the writings, actions and achievements of Frederick
the Great, but still lacked romantic colour. For it still justified
itself as a regrettable necessity.
22
Beyond Nihilism
But romantic dynamism transformed this tight-lipped im-
morality of princes into the exaltation of nationhood as a law
unto itself. The uniqueness of great nations gave them here the
right to unlimited development at the expense of their weaker
neighbours. This national immoralism developed furthest in
Germany and was upheld there with a strong feeling of its own
moral superiority over the moralizing statesmen of other
countries. This German attitude duplicated on the national
scale Rousseau's flaunting of his uniquely vicious nature against
a hypocritical society. I shall say more about this later.
Meanwhile, let me make it clear that I am not concerned with
the effect of Rousseau's writings on the course of history. Their
effect was considerable, but even had his works been overlooked,
the fact would remain that a great thinker anticipated in three
respects the inherent instability of the rationalist ideal of a sec-
ular society. He saw that it implied an unrestrained individualism,
demanding absolute freedom and equality far beyond the limits
imposed by any existing society. He saw, next, that such
absolute sovereignty of individual citizens is conceivable
within society only under a popular government, exercising
absolute power. And thirdly, he anticipated the ideal of an
amoral individualism, asserting the rights of a unique creative
personality against the morality of a discredited society. And
though the transportation of romantic immoralism on to the
national scale was admittedly strange to Rousseau's cosmo-
politan outlook, yet this too was largely prefigured by his
thought. Now that these implications have proved to be paths of
history, the fact that they were discerned at a time when no one
had yet thought of them as lines of action, strongly suggests
that they were in fact the logical consequences of their ante-
cedents: i.e. of a sceptical rationalism combined with the
secularized fervour of Christianity. I do not say that these
logical consequences were bound to take effect and I shall show
in fact that they have remained unfulfilled in some important
areas. But I do suggest that wherever they did come to light
during the two centuries after Rousseau, they may be regarded
as a manifestation of a logical process which first ran its course
in Rousseau's mind.
I have set the scene and introduced the ideas which were to
move the past five generations up to the stage which is our own
23
Michael Polanyi
responsibility today. I see the course of these 150 years as the
rise of moral passions which, though mostly beneficent, some-
times assumed terrible forms,, culminating in the revolutions of
the twentieth century. I see the present generation still reeling
under the blows of these moral excesses, groping its way back to
the original ideals of the eighteenth century. But since they have
once collapsed under the weight of their logical implications,
can they possibly be restored to guide us once more? This is
now the question.
I have said that the situation In which the modern mind finds
itself today has emerged in two stages from the mentality of a
static society. The first stage was the process of intellectual
secularization, spreading the new scientific outlook of the
universe and yet evoking no profound emotions and calling for
no vast political actions ; the second was the dynamic process
which released these emotions and actions. At this point the
thoughts of philosophers were transformed into ideologies.
Ideologies are fighting creeds. They fought against the defenders
of the static age and they also fought against each other, as
rivals. Those who speak today of the end of ideologies, mean
that dynamism has abated and can move men today therefore
without commitment to a theoretical fighting creed.
The effectiveness of dynamic political action, carried on with
little Ideological guidance Is illustrated by the development of
Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The aboli-
tion of slavery, the factory laws, the emancipation of Noncon-
formists and Catholics, the reform of parliament, the lunacy
laws, criminal and penal reform, and the many other humani-
tarian improvements, for which this period was named the Age
of Reform, were promoted by people of widely different persua-
sions. The reforms had their early roots in the sustained struggle
against oppression and social Injustice which had already found
influential advocates in politics for centuries before the Enlight-
enment. They were not achieved by a secularized anti-clerical
movement, but by ancient political forces, quickened by a new
zeal for social improvement. With his theory of British political
practice, Montesquieu gave an ideology to France; yet in
Britain this theory was never an ideology, but a commentary on
established forms of life. No one objected, for example, to the
fact that Britain's chief executive was responsible to Parliament
and that British judges continued to make case-law, although
24
Beyond Nihilism
these proceedings Infringed the theoretical division of powers.
Such was indeed the fate of all political theory in England : it
never became more than a set of maxims, subject to interpreta-
tion by customary practice. The genius of Hobbes was disre-
garded,, for his teachings were not consonant with practice.
Locke was exalted and the great gaps of his theory ignored, for
practice readily filled these gaps.
Thus Britain avoided the self-destructive implications of the
Enlightenment of which she was one chief author. Remember
David Hume's game of backgammon, to which he turned in
disgust over the consequences of his scepticism it has remained
the paradigm of British national life. It preserved down to this
day the movement of eighteenth-century humanism. In America
the same result was achieved through a passionate veneration
for the constitution. Hence Britain, whose pioneering scepticism
was feared by French conservatives in the eighteenth century,
came in the nineteenth century to be looked upon as old-
fashioned by the dynamic intelligentsia of the Continent. I have
mentioned already how the German romantics, who denied the
relevance of moral standards to the external actions of states,
indignantly rejected the moralizing talk of English and Ameri-
can statesmen as stupid or dishonest, or both. But German
socialists were equally nonplussed by the religious and moral
exhortations of British labour leaders. Continental Marxists
kept on discussing the curious backwardness of English and
American politics even as Communists in Albania today are
probably wondering how countries like Germany, France and
England could fall so far behind the enlightened example of
Albania.
There was a similar relationship between England and the
Continent also in respect to romantic individualism. Byron had
spread the image of the noble romantic immoralist through
European literature as far as the Russian steppes. The poet
Lenski in Pushkin's Onegin (1833) has a portrait of Byron in Ms
remote country house. But England itself got rid of Byron
without a trace. The problem of evil, the possibility that evil
may be morally superior to good, which affected all nineteenth-
century thought on the Continent, was never raised in England.
Morley, in his book On Compromise, deplores the fact that
England's civic genius had restrained the adventures of specula-
tive thought so as to keep them politically innocuous. Had he
25
Michael Polanyi
lived to see our own day, Morley might have felt that England
had remained backward only on the road to disaster. Or, per-
haps more positively, he would have seen that England like
America had effectively relaxed the internal contradictions
inherent in any Christian or post-Christian society, by gradually
humanizing society, while strengthening the affection between
fellow citizens for the sake of which they may forgive mutual
injustice. Because it was this achievement that has preserved the
eighteenth-century framework of thought almost intact in these
countries up to this day.
However, in 1789, France broke away and led the world
towards a revolutionary consummation of the contradiction
inherent in a post-Christian rationalism. The ideology of total
revolution is a variant of the derivation of absolutism from
absolute individualism. Its argument is simple and has yet to be
answered. If society is not a divine institution, it is made by man,
and man is free to do with society what he likes. There is then no
excuse for having a bad society, and we must make a good one
without delay. For this purpose you must take power and you
can take power over a bad society only by a revolution ; so you
must go ahead and make a revolution. Moreover, to achieve a
comprehensive improvement of society you need comprehensive
powers ; so you must regard all resistance to yourself as high
treason and must put it down mercilessly.
This logic is alas familiar to us and we can readily identify its
more or less complete fulfilment from Robespierre and St. Just
to Lenin, Bela Kun, Hitler and Mao Tse-tung. But there is a
progression from Robespierre to his successors which transforms
Messianic violence from a means to an end into an aim in itself.
Such is the final position reached by moral passions in their
modern embodiments, whether in personal nihilism or in totali-
tarian violence. I shall call this transformation a process of
moral inversion.
J. L. Talmon's richly documented account of the ideas which
moved the French Revolution and later filled the revolutionary
movements up to about 1848 makes us realize the depth of this
transformation and supplies already some signs of its begin-
nings. Here is the language in which Robespierre addressed his
followers :
'But it exists, I assure you, pure and sensitive souls ; it exists, that
sublime and sacred love of humanity, without which a great
26
Beyond Nihilism
revolution Is but a manifest crime that destroys another crime ;
that selfishness of men not degraded, which finds its celestial
delight in the calm of a pure conscience and the charming spectacle
of the public good. You feel it burning at this very moment in your
souls ; I feel it in my own.' 1
Yes, it existed, this passion of pure and sensitive souls, this
sublime and sacred love of humanity and it still exists today,
only it no longer speaks of itself in these terms. Robespierre's
text contains some seeds of the more modern terms, when he
speaks of that selfishness ('egotsme 9 ) which delights in the public
good. This phrase echoes Helvetius' utilitarianism, which would
establish the ideals of humanity scientifically, by rooting them in
man's desire for pleasure. The next step was to reject humani-
tarian ideals as such ; Bentham contemptuously spoke of natural
rights and laws of nature as senseless jargon. 'Utility is the
supreme object/ he wrote, 'which comprehends in itself law,
virtue, truth and justice.' We have seen that the logic of Ben-
tham's scientific morality was mercifully suspended and its
teachings interpreted in support of liberal reforms in England,
but on the Continent we see henceforth the scientific formula-
tion of dynamism entering into ever more effective competition
with its original emotional manifestations. Both were revolu-
tionary in scope, and the Utopian phantasies of both bordered
on insanity; but as time went on aE these inordinate hopes
became increasingly assimilated to teachings claiming the auth-
ority of science. And the new scientific utopianisrn declared that
the future society must submit absolutely to its scientific rulers ;
once politics has been elevated to the rank of a natural science,
liberty of conscience would disappear. 2 The infallibility of Rous-
seau's general will was transposed into the unassailable con-
clusions of a scientific sociology.
About the same time, personal immoralism that had issued
from Rousseau, underwent a similar scientific incrustation. It
resulted in the character first described by Turgenev as a nihilist.
The line of romantic immoralists which Pushkin had started in
Russia with the Byronian figure of Oaegin and of Herman (the
1 J. L. Talmon, The Origin of Totalitarian Democracy, London (1952) p. 68
(my translation).
z See F. A. Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science, Glencoe, Illinois,
(1952), particularly his study of Comte, p. 138 ff.
c 27
Michael Polanyi
Napoleon-struck hero of the Queen of Spades), was not discon-
tinued. Raskolnikov develops their problems further, by com-
mitting a murder only to test the powers of his immorality. The
figure of Raskolnikov was independently re-created by Nietz-
sche in his tragic apologia of the Pale Criminal in Zarathustra,
and this figure, with others akin to it, gained popular influence
in Germany and France. But not in Russia. The popular ideal of
the Russian enlightened youth from about 1860 onwards was
the hard, impersonal scientific nihilist, first embodied in Tur-
genev's hero, the medical student Bazarov.
Men of this type were called 'realists', 'progressives', or
simply 'new men'. They were strict materialists, who combined
their total denial of genuinely moral ideals with a frenzied hatred
of society on account of its immorality. Thus they were morally
dedicated to commit any act of treachery, blackmail or cruelty in
the service of a programme of universal destruction. On 21
November, 1869, the nihilist leader Nechaev had his follower,
the student Ivanov, assassinated in order to strengthen party
discipline. This is the story which Dostoievsky has told in The
Possessed, representing Ivanov by Shatov and Nechaev by Piotr
Stepanovich Verkhovensky.
The structure of this crime prefigured the murder of his own
followers by Stalin ; but there was yet some theoretical support
needed. It was supplied by a new scientific sociology claiming to
have proved three things: namely (1) that the total destruction
of the existing society was the only method for achieving any
essential improvement of society ; (2) that nothing beyond this
act of violence was required, or even to be considered, since it
was unscientific to make any plans for the new society, and (3)
that no moral restraints must be observed in the revolutionary
seizure of power, since (a) this process was historically inevit-
able, and so beyond human control and (b) morality, truth, etc.,
were mere epiphenomena of class interests so that the only scien-
tific meaning of morality, truth, justice, etc., consisted in advan-
cing those class interests which science had proved to be
ascendant. Such action would embody all morality, veracity and
justice, in the only scientifically acceptable sense.
This scientific sociology was supplied by Marxism-Leninism.
Though said to transform socialism from Utopia into a science,
its convincing power was due to the satisfaction it gave to the
Utopian dreams which it purported to replace. And this proved
28
Beyond Nihilism
sufficient. Any factual objection to the theory was repelled as a
reactionary attack against socialism, while socialism itself was
safe from criticism, since any discussion of it had been con-
demned as unscientific speculation by Marx. Marxism provides
a perfect ideology for a moral dynamism which could express
itself only in a naturalistic conception of man ; this is its historic
function.
The generous passions of our age could now covertly explode
inside the engines of a pitiless machinery of violence. The pure
and sensitive souls to whom Robespierre had appealed still
existed, and were indeed more numerous than ever, and Ms
sublime and sacred love of humanity was still burning as ever.
But these sentiments had become immanent in policies of mani-
fest immorality. Their accents had become scientifically didactic.
Listen to an example of Lenin's language in the programmatic
statement made in June, 1917:
The dictatorship of the proletariat is a scientific term stating the
class in question and the particular form of state authority, called
dictatorship, namely, authority based not on law, not on elections,
but directly on the armed force of some portion of the population.
Robespierre's terror had justified itself by its noble aspira-
tions ; Marx refused such justification and said that violence
alone must be the aim of a scientific socialism. This is moral
inversion: a condition in which high moral purpose operates
only as the hidden force of an openly declared inhumanity.
In The Possessed, the earlier type of personal inversion is
embodied in Stavrogin, whom the modern political immoralist
Verkhovensky is vainly trying to draw into his conspiratorial
organization. But by the twentieth century the two types become
convertible into each other throughout Europe. The personally
immoralist bohemian converts his anti-bourgeois protest readily
into the social action by welcoming an * armed bohemian' and
thus supporting absolute violence as the only honest mode of
political action. The two lines of anti-nomianism meet and
mingle in French existentialism. Mme de Beauvoir hails the
Marquis de Sade as a great moralist 1 when Sade declares
through one of his characters :*...! have destroyed everything
1 Simone de Beauvoir, The Marquis de Sade, Grove Press, New York, 1953,
p. 55. *. . . owing to his headstrong sincerity ... he deserves to be hailed as a
great moralist.'
29
Michael Polanyi
in my heart that might have interfered with my pleasure. 51 And
this triumph over conscience, as she calls it, 2 is interpreted in
terms of her own Marxism: 6 . . Sade passionately exposes the
bourgeois hoax which consists in erecting class interests into
universal (moral) principles.' 3
I have said before that romanticism recognized the extension
of national power as a nation's supreme right and duty. This
political iinmoralism is also a moral inversion, akin to the
personal immoralism of the romantic school. Meinecke has
shown that German Realpolitik, the identification of Might and
Right in international relations, was the ultimate outcome of the
Hegelian teaching of immanent reason. The strength of
immanent morality is proved by the violence of manifest immor-
ality. This, Meinecke thinks, is the grim truth blandly over-
looked or hypocritically papered over by moralizing statesmen
and English-speaking people in general He admitted that the
knowledge of this truth tended to brutalize its holders, but
thought that the English-speaking people had avoided this de-
pravation only by turning a blind eye on the disparity between
their teachings and their actions. He could see no honest way
out ; and I would agree that there is no way out that is not ex-
posed to the suspicion of dishonesty.
A great wave of anti-bourgeois immoralism sweeping through
the minds of German youth in the inter-war period, formed the
reservoir from which the SA and SS were recruited. They were
inspired by the same truculent honesty and passion for moral
sacrifice which turned the nihilists of Russia, whether romantic
or scientistic, into the apparatchiks of Stalinism.
People often speak of Communism or Nazism as a secular
religion. But not all fanaticism is religious. The passions of the
total revolution and total wars which have devastated our age
were not religious but moral. Their morality was inverted and
became immanent in brute force because a naturalistic view of
man forced them into this manifestation. Once they are im-
manent, moral motives no longer speak in their own voice s and
are no longer accessible to moral arguments ; such is the struc-
ture of modern nihilistic fanaticism.
Here then is my diagnosis of the pathological morality of our
time. What chance is there of remedying this condition?
The healer's art must rely ultimately on the patient's natural
1 Ibid., p. 54; a Ibid., p. 54; 8 Ibid., p. 63.
30
Beyond Nihilism
powers for recovery. We have unmistakable evidence of these
powers in our case. From its origins in the French Revolution
the great tide of dynamism had been mounting steadily, both
spreading its benefits and causing its pathological perversions,
during roughly 150 years ; and then at the very centre of revo-
lutionary dynamism the tide turned. Pasternak dates the
change in Russia around 1943. It arose in an upsurge of national
feeling. Hatred of Stalin gave way to the resolve of conquering
Hitler in spite of Stalin. Victory was in sight 3 and with this
prospect came the growing realization that the existing system
of fanatical hatred, lies and cruelties was in fact pointless.
Intimations of freedom began to spread. These thoughts repu-
diated the core of Messianic immoralism and for amoment broke
with its magic. A process of sobering had set in. In 1948 Tito
defected from Stalin, invoking truth and national dignity as
principles superior to party discipline.
The decline of ideological dynamism set in also on this side
of the Iron Curtain. In England, in Germany and in Austria,
the change of heart was noticeable from the early 1950's. Socia-
lists who, even in notoriously reformist countries like Britain,
had demanded a complete transformation of society, began to
re-interpret their principle everywhere in terms of piecemeal
progress.
Finally, the events following the death of Stalin (1953) clearly
revealed that a system based on a total inversion of morality was
intrinsically unstable. The first act of Stalin's successors was to
release the thirteen doctors of the Kremlin, who had quite
recently been sentenced to death on their own confession of
murderous attempts against the life of Stalin and other mem-
bers of the government. This action had a shattering effect on
the Party. A young man who at that time was a fervent sup-
porter of Stalinism in Hungary described to me how he felt
when the news came through on the wireless. It was as if the
motion picture of Ms whole political development had started
running off backwards. If party-truth was now to be refuted by
mere bourgeois objectivity, then Stalin's whole fictitious uni-
verse would presently dissolve and so the loyalty which sus-
tained this fiction and was in its turn sustained by it would
be destroyed as well.
The alarm was justified. For it is clear by now that the new
masters of the Kremlin had acted as they did* because they
31
Michael Polanyi
believed their position would be safer if they had more of the
truth on their side and less against them. So deciding, they had
acknowledged the power of the truth over the Party and the
existence of an independent ground for opposition against the
Party. And this independent ground this new Mount Ararat
laid bare by the receding flood of dynamism was bound to
expand rapidly. For if truth was no longer defined as that which
serves the interests of the Party, neither would art, morality
or justice continue to be so defined, since aH these hang closely
together as has eventually become apparent.
So it came to pass that the whole system of moral inversion
broke down in the Hungarian and Polish risings of 1956. These
movements were originally not rebellions against the Com-
munists, but a change of mind of leading Communists. The
Hungarian rising not only started, but went a long way towards
victory, as a mere revulsion of Communist intellectuals from
their own earlier convictions. The first revolutionary event was
the meeting of a literary circle, the Petofi society, on the thirtieth
of June, 1956. An audience of about six thousand, overflowing
into the streets to which the proceedings were transmitted by
loudspeakers, met for nine hours. Speaker after speaker de-
manded freedom to write the truth ; to write about real people,
real streets and fields, real sentiments and problems ; to report
truthfully on current events and on matters of history. In mak-
ing these demands many speakers were reverting to beliefs they
had previously abhorred and even violently suppressed.
In the months that followed these reborn principles worked
their way rapidly further, frequently bursting out in self-accusa-
tions by Communist intellectuals who repented their previous
connivance in reducing truth, justice and morality, to mere
instruments of the Party.
This is how the decision matured which Gyula Hay, since
then imprisoned by Kadar, declared on 22 September in
Irodalmi Ujsag :
'The best Communist writers have resolved after many diffi-
culties, serious errors and bitter mental struggles that in no
circumstances will they ever write lies again.'
Hay realized that on these grounds all writers, both inside
and outside the Party, were now reunited. In a speech made on
17 September he declared:
32
Beyond Nihilism
4 We Hungarian writers, irrespective of party allegiance or philo-
sophic convictions, form hereby a firm alliance for the dissemina-
tion of the truth. 9
It was this alliance which lent its voice to the hitherto mute
and powerless dissatisfaction of the workers. When the students
marched into the streets to hold their forbidden demonstration,
tens of thousands streamed from the factories to join them.
Within hours the army had changed sides, the secret police was
dissolved. The heavily armed and severely disciplined organiza-
tion of a totalitarian state evaporated overnight, because its
convictions had been consumed by its own newly awakened
conscience.
This upsurge of truth resembled up to a point the Enlighten-
ment of the eighteenth century, but it differed from it pro-
foundly. For the Encyclopaedists were not repudiating a string
of lies which they had deliberately swallowed, in order to
strengthen their own political convictions. There was no occa-
sion for them to restore a belief in truth and morality, which
had never been questioned by the orthodoxy they were attack-
ing, nor ever been scorned by themselves.
By contrast, the process of the Communist revulsion had been
dramatically told by the Polish poet Adam Wazyk, himself a
Party stalwart, in his Poem for Adults, written a year before the
events in Hungary started. Fourier had promised that socialism
would turn the seas into lemonade, and so the Party members
had eagerly swallowed sea water as if it were lemonade. But
eventually their stomachs turned and from time to time they
had to retire and vomit. The word 'vomiting 9 has since become
a technical term for describing the recoil of morally inverted
man : the act by which he violently turns himself right way up.
A new term was needed, because nothing of this kind had ever
happened before.
The Hungarian Revolution is the paradigm of an intellectual
movement which, in less dramatic forms, has spread all through
the area of receding dynamism, almost everywhere outside Com-
munist China. The Soviet Government has condemned its mani-
festation within its own domain as revisionism, and I think the
name 'revisionism' may be applied to the different forms of this
movement everywhere.
Revisionism recoils from a negation. The negation took place
33
Michael Polanyi
when the Enlightenment, having secularized Christian hopes,
destroyed itself by moral inversion ; and the recoil from this
negation occurred when moral inversion proved unstable in its
turn. This recoil is the source of all revisionism.
But, unfortunately, to recognize these antecedents is to call in
question all the ideas which have hitherto guided revisionist
movements. A re-awakened national feeing has been one of
these ideas. Pasternak tells us how it humanized the Soviet
regime during the war; it has then served the restoration of
humane ideals in Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia. And per-
haps above all, it rejuvenated the ancient societies of Asia and
Africa, creating, along with much wasteful strife, new popular
communities which transcend the ideological conflicts of Euro-
pean dynamism.
Another revisionist idea lay in the new found alliance between
liberalism and religious beliefs. The Churches seemed to recall
modem man from a state beyond nihilism to his condition
before the secular enlightenment. And finally, the sceptical
mood of the Enlightenment itself has been given a new lease of
life. The more sober, pragmatist attitude towards public affairs
which has spread since 1950 through Britain and America,
Germany and Austria, reproduces in its repudiation of ideolo-
gical strife the attitude of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists
towards religious bigotry.
But revision cannot succeed by merely returning to ideas
which have already proved unstable. The rule of a dogmatic
authority is no more acceptable today than it was in the days of
Voltaire. We shall not go back on the scientific revolution which
has secularized extensive domains of knowledge. We shall not
go back either on the hopes of Christianity and become as
calmly indifferent to social wrongs as secularized antiquity had
been. And national feeling has proved in the past no safeguard
against the descent of dynamism into moral inversion. In fact,
all the logical antecedents of inversion are present today just as
they -were before. Can the very channels which had previously
led into moral inversion now offer a retreat from it? Surely not
for long.
I do not wish to explore this question much further. We have
arrived beyond nihilism today, even though the place at which
we have arrived is similar to that where we stood before ; and
we cannot foresee the creative possibilities by which men may
34
Beyond Nihilism
discover an avenue which will not lead back to MMMsm. But one
possibility should be mentioned.
Perhaps the present recoil may be stabilized by the upsurge of
a more clear-sighted political conscience. We might conceivably
achieve a kind of suspended logic, like that which kept Britain
and America so happily back from the road to disaster, and
indeed this might come about the way it did in England. The
religious wars of Europe reached this country in mid-seventeenth
century and strife tore England for many years. One King was
beheaded, another deposed. But the settlement of 1688, the Peti-
tion of Right, the doctrine of John Locke, put an end to
this conflict and established, for the first time since the rise of
Christianity, the foundations of secular society. Civility pre-
vailed over religious strife and a society was founded which was
dynamic and yet united. May not Europe repeat this feat? May
we not learn from the disasters of the past forty years to estab-
lish a civic partnership., united in its resolve on continuous
reforms our dynamism restrained by the knowledge that radi-
calism will throw us back into disaster the moment we try to
act out its principles literally?
It may happen. But this is hardly a legitimate field for specu-
lation ; for from this point onwards, thought must take on the
form of action.
35
Messianism, Nihilism and the Future
RICHARD LOWENTHAL
To look for the origin of the nihilistic ideological passions
that have devastated the lives of our generation and are
still menacing the next ; to try to discern the chances for
an abatement of these passions, on which the survival of civil-
ized life on our planet may depend there could hardly be a
more important subject for a discussion of the role of ideas in
our time.
Yet Polanyi's approach to its analysis, for all its original and
fruitful suggestions, seems to me to suffer from two opposite
limitations. On one side, he confines his inquiry deliberately to the
inner logic of ideas, as if the whole witches' cauldron of our time
had been set a-boiling by an initial error in the recipe; in his
setting of the scene heresies are breeding further heresies almost
without regard to the conditions of life which confronted the
heretics. Of course, this is a conscious methodical device ; Pol-
anyi shows his awareness of its limitations when referring to the
merciful lack of logic displayed in the English failure to follow
up the same initial assumptions which elsewhere led to nihilism.
But as this example shows, it is most unlikely that a valid fore-
cast of the chances for transcending the age of ideological pas-
sions could be made without going beyond the limits of the
history and logic of ideas.
On the other hand, and paradoxically, Polanyi does not seem
to have taken the ideas whose origin and role he is discussing
quite seriously enough. If I understand him rightly, he defines
modern nihilism as the cult of revolutionary violence not as a
means to an end, but as an aim in itself; and he apparently
assumes that this concept covers both Nazism and Stalinism.
It is his thesis that the manifest political immoralism of both has
developed from a common origin in the passionate social moral-
ity of Rousseau by a process of 'moral inversion', because the
37
Richard Lowenthal
original moral purpose, having become combined with a s natur-
alistic 5 view of man., ended by becoming 'immanent' in the cult
of force. He traces several roads to nihilism, and we meet on
them such varied characters as the Marquis de Sade and the
German romantics, Nechayev and Nietzsche, Lenin and the
French existentialists ; but the critical point of 'moral inversion *
through which all these roads must pass is located with Karl
Marx, who according to Professor Polanyi said that 'viol-
ence alone must be the aim of a scientific socialism 5 .
I submit that this interpretation bears no obvious relation to
anything Marx ever wrote, and is indeed in demonstrable con-
flict with much he did write. But if that can be shown, it affects
not only Polanyi's map of the historical road to modern
nihilism, but his basic concept of the identical ideological origin
of the two great 4 secular fanaticisms ' of our time.
Let me, then, state at the outset that Communist and Nazi
ideological attitudes to violence have always been sharply differ-
ent even during the period of the worst Stalinist crimes. The
crimes, of course, were similar ; the ideological justifications were
not. There was a cult of violence for its own sake, a belief in the
value of war and brutality in themselves for raising a higher type
of man, in Nazism and Fascism over and above the belief that
violence was needed for victory, as a means to an end. There was
no such belief in Stalinism where even the worst crimes were
justified as needed for the defence of the threatened * workers'
state ' against 4 imperialist plots ', the most ruthless mass deporta-
tions and liquidations as necessary stages towards the attain-
ment of the classless society and the fulfilment of humanistic
values.
Lest anybody should think this a distinction without a differ-
ence, three of its practical consequences should be mentioned
here. The first is the contrast, a hundred times attested, between
the callous indifference of the Soviet labour camps and the
deliberate sadism of the Nazi KZ's, used as a means for 'hard-
ening' the SS elite. The second is the simple fact that we all are
alive, though Stalin had atom bombs since 1949; if he had
gloried in violence for its own sake and not as a means to an
end, to be judged by criteria of expediency, we probably should
not be. The third is the very same inteEectual revolt of Hungar-
ian and Polish Communist writers which Polanyi describes a
revolt based on the discrepancy between the professed humanistic
38
Messiamism^ Nihilism and the Future
values and the inhuman practice of the regime : if the ideology
had been as "nihilistic 5 as the practice, there would have been
no revulsion among its believers.
Professor Polanyi is barred from perceiving the difference by
his belief that the cult of violence as an aim in itself started with
Marx. He bases this view on Marx's criticism of detailed plans
for a socialist Utopia, which, according to Polanyi, argued * that
nothing beyond this act of violence' (the revolution) 'was re-
quired, or even to be considered, since it was unscientific to
make any plans for the new society'. Yet Marx, while rejecting
detailed institutional plans, did in fact draw fairly precise out-
lines for his own Utopia. He wrote of the two post-revolution-
ary stages of Socialism public ownership of the means of
production, with equal rewards for equal labour and Com-
munism abolition of the wage system and distribution accord-
ing to needs ; of the 'withering away' of the state as a separate
apparatus of force, once the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' had
broken the resistance of the former exploiting classes and de-
stroyed their economic basis ; of the disappearance of the struc-
tural difference between town and countryside, and of the
professional division of labour between supervisory and manual
work. Such was the classless society which was to be the final
outcome of the proletarian revolution ; nor did Marx even re-
gard violence as indispensable for the achievement of this aim in
all countries. In his famous speech at Amsterdam on September
8, 1872 immediately after the Hague Congress which had split
the first International and ended his participation in it Marx
admitted 'that there exist countries like America, England, and
if I knew your institutions better, I would add Holland, where
the workers may be able to attain their ends by peaceful means '.
By contrast, he believed that violence was needed to achieve
these ends in the leading continental countries ; but it was the ends
that were given by his general theory, and the means that were
contingent to Mm. In turn, these aims were clearly derived from
the humanistic values of the enlightenment; and whether these
values were based in his inind on a 'naturalistic' view of man
may be open to controversy in the light of the philosophical
writings of his youth.
Marx and Ms followers, then, did not refuse to 'justify' revo-
lutionary terror by its 'noble aspirations' any more than Robes-
pierre had done though the language used by them in defining
39
Richard Lowenthal
these aspirations was, of course, different. In attacking 'bour-
geois morality' as hypocritical, they never ceased to attack it
from the basis of its own professed values the values of the
Judaeo-Christian and liberal-humanist tradition and to claim
that only the destruction of the existing social and political
order could lead to a society truly inspired by these values ; in
just the same way, the revisionist critics of the Stalinist dictator-
ships in Hungary and Poland attacked its practice as hypo-
critical on the basis of its own humanistic ideological claims.
This attitude is diametrically opposed to that which, starting
from disgust with the same hypocrisy of the old order, concludes
that the values themselves are false and should be replaced by
an honest cult of the right of the stronger, the ennobling quali-
ties of violence and the rejection of all traditional moral re-
straints in principle. That latter attitude, to which the term of
nihilism should properly be reserved, can be traced in different
versions and on different levels in the Marquis de Sade and in
some figures of Dostoievsky, in Nietzsche and the ' social Dar-
winism' of Spencer and his school, and finally in the Fascist and
National Socialist movements. But while it is rooted in a similar
historical situation as Jacobin and Marxist political Messianism,
and may ultimately lead to similar political consequences, it is a
spiritually and ideologically quite distinct phenomenon. This
remains true, although there have been notable cases of a con-
fusion of both attitudes, as with Bakunin and Nechayev, and
with the discovery of de Sade by Marxist existentialists in
France, and of transition from one to the other, as with Musso-
lini.
Given, then, that the political Messianists of the Left start
from the common humanistic heritage of our civilization, what
is there in their ideology that has led them repeatedly to erect
terror into a system of power? I can discuss here only two ele-
ments, the first of which is by now generally familiar: the belief
in a secular paradise, and in its dependence on the achievement
of total power by an organized elite.
Professor Polanyi has pointed to the example of the chiliastic
sects of the pre-Reformation and Reformation age, and to the
secularization of the Millennial dream with the general secular-
ization of Western society. But in speaking of 'secular fana-
ticism' and 'moral passions' rather than of secular or political
40
Messianism^ Nihilism and the Future
religions lie has, I feel, underestimated the power which the
revolutionary myth derives from its specificaEy religious content ;
the writers who have stressed this aspect men like Berd-
yayev, Waldemar Gurian, F. A. Voigt, or Talmon were them-
selves religious thinkers, and they knew what they were talking
about. There is more than 'moral passion' in an elaborate
system that tells us that mankind started in a state of innocence
(state of nature, primitive Communism), was corrupted by am-
bition and avarice (class society, state, exploitation) and will
eventually enter a realm of perfect justice where all sin (oppres-
sion, exploitation, rivalry) and conflict will disappear and no
compulsion will be needed : this is a sacred history and a promise
of salvation on earth. Marx's achievement as a mythmaker was
precisely to have invested the 'laws of history' and the class
struggle of the proletariat with this religious meaning.
Yet the Marxian myth of the inevitable victory of the prole-
tariat that would bring about the classless society was only the
basis from which a totalitarian ideology, with all the conse-
quences we know, could develop : it was not yet that ideology
itself. For those consequences one further step was required
the unconditional identification of the hope of secular salvation,
not with the victory of a class, of a social or historic force, but
with the power of a specific organized group and its leader. An
abstract paradise may justify crimes but only a concrete Mes-
siah can authorize and order them.
With Karl Marx, the Messiah remained abstract : the Prole-
tariat. He wrote of its dictatorship, but had no definite views
about its necessary political form ; Engels even came to regard a
democratic republic as the specific form for it towards the end of
his life. Marx never led a conspiratorial party or aspired to
power in its name, he was a prophet, but it did not occur to him
to claim the role of Messiah for himself. More than that, he was
convinced that the victory of the proletariat could and would
take different political forms in different countries. If his passion
was attached to the final aim, his powerful mind and his working
energy was devoted to an understanding of all the varied forms
of the process that would lead to it: there could be no passe-
partout, no master-key to history and a fortiori no universal
political recipe.
It is this fixation to a recipe of total power which marks the
transformation of a chiliastic myth into a totalitarian ideology.
41
Richard Lowenthat
In theory, salvation may still be providentially inevitable, but in
practice it comes to depend on the triumph of the true believers,
organized in an exclusive sect. This triumph, the conquest and
preservation of power by 'the Party', thus comes to be viewed
as the one indispensable guarantee for the achievement of the
final aim the precondition for the attainment of all the values
which motivated the movement. Power (not violence as such)
thus becomes an intermediate (though not an ultimate) aim in
itself; the vision of the believers is focused on this single point
through which the March of History must pass, and on which
all their energies must concentrate, and is correspondingly
narrowed. Henceforth, all actions will be judged solely by
their expediency in the struggle for power, not by reference
to the moral values embodied in the final aim : the intermed-
iate but indispensable aim of power has attracted all the
salvational importance of the final aim unto itself, and has come
like a dark tunnel between the believer and his original Utopian
vision.
In the Marxist tradition, the decisive step in this transforma-
tion was accomplished by Lenin. Marx, in contrast to many of
the revolutionary conspirators of his time, never accepted the
doctrine that 'the end justifies the means* as a general principle.
He approved of revolutionary terror against the 'class enemy'
he admired both the Jacobins for using it when in power, and
the Russian 'Narodnaya Volya' for using it in opposition to
Tsarism when other means were denied them. Yet he was gen-
uinely horrified by Nechayev's 'murder for Party discipline',
just as were most Russian revolutionaries at the time: while
repudiating what he called 'bourgeois morality', Marx in fact
judged the actions of his fellow-revolutionaries by a definite
moral standard and not by exclusive reference to the expediency
of Party power.
Lenin, on the other hand, did regard every means as justified
in principle ; it is no accident that he expressed admiration for
Nechayev's energy and ruthlessness, though he did not speci-
fically refer to the murder. If he did accept in practice certain
restraints in dealing with opponents within his party, even after
he was in power, the borderline could not be defined within his
doctrines, and Stalin only carried Leninism to its logical con-
clusion in doing away with those restraints. The basis for the
decisive change from Marx to Lenin was, of course, that Lenin's
42
Messianism, Nihilism and the Future
political Messlanism was Institutionally and personally concrete
as Marx's was not : Lenin was convinced from an early date that
unless Ms party took power, the aim could not be achieved, and
that his party could not win and hold power unless it followed
his leadership.
Yet neither Lenin nor even Stalin ever regarded power as an
end in itself: they kept justifying their actions by the vision of
the aim, and seeking to transform society at great cost in order
to get nearer to it. Still less did a nihilistic cult of violence for its
own sake develop at any stage of the moral descent from Marx
via Lenin to Stalin. The true horror of Communist political
Messianism, unlike that of nihilism of the Nazi type, is the
horror of unconscious and indeed fanatical hypocrisy of ruth-
less amoralism justified by the subjectively sincere profession of
belief in a millennial rule of the saints.
To the Conservative, not only any revolutionary, but any
radical critic of the traditional order and its conventional hypo-
crisy easily appears as a nihilist. Many of the young Russian
followers of the critic Pisarev in the late 1850's, for whom Tur-
genev coined the term, were not even political revolutionaries,
though they certainly advanced a crudely naturalistic view of
man ; they were, in fact, proponents of the new morality of the
emancipated Russian intelligentsia, and formed part of a
broader intellectual current to which also such revolutionary
social critics as Chernyshevsky belonged. In the 70's and 80's,
the terrorists of the Narodnaya Volya, to whom the label of
nihilists was generally applied in the West though not in Russia
and least of all by themselves, were men and women who com-
bined ruthlessness in striking down a few selected enemies with
exceptionally high moral standards and with an insistence that
they did not wish to use force to secure power for themselves :
once they had overthrown Tsarism, they proclaimed, they
would call the first free elections in Russian history and compete
in them, with an anarcho-socialist programme, on equal terms
with any other party. The only documents of the Russian nine-
teenth-century revolutionary movement that deserve the descrip-
tion of 'nihilist' as used today are some of Bakunin's paeans to
the 'creative delight of destruction*, and particularly the
'Catechism of the Revolutionary* he wrote for Nechayev; and
only these documents, which were sharply rejected by the bulk
D 43
Richard Lowenthal
of the contemporary revolutionaries, show a combination of the
cult of destruction and violence with the vision of the anarchistic
millennium of free co-operators.
On the whole, however, the believers in the c creative delight
of destruction' have been people who rejected this vision and
the underlying Christian and humanistic values. They 'have
rejected both Christian charity and secular fraternity, both the
equality of the immortal souls before God and the equality of
mortal citizens before the law or in their social status and
chances. The millennium that their Messiah was to bring was to
end the degenerative influence of both the gospel and the
enlightenment, and to restore the healthy, revitalizing rule of the
strong, of the aristocracy of Nature. The formal structure of
their vision of history, it is true, showed the same origin in the
tripartite apocalyptic scheme as that of their Marxist antipodes,
with biology replacing economics as the master-key to history,
the state of innocence identified with racial purity, and the fall
with the bastardization of the chosen race ; but the content of
the final vision and the values inspiring it were so diametrically
opposed to Christian morality that there seems to be almost as
little point in describing the racist ideology as 'chiliastic' or as a
'political Messianism' as there is in describing the Marxist
myth as 'nihilist'.
Yet the apocalyptic form of the racialist myth points to the
fact that it, too, represents a secular religion a sacred history
mapping out the road to salvation on this earth. Only its spiri-
tual model is not to be found in the typical chiliastic heresies,
but in the antinomian and satanistic ones those which sought
escape from the burden of guilt and moral conflict in the doc-
trine that every e sin' was permitted to the Elect, and that the
ability to commit deeds which to others were deadly sin without
a sense of guilt was the very proof of election. In Norman
Cohn's study of medieval heresies which Polanyi quotes, the
wide spread of this form of heretical mysticism the so-called
'Free Spirits' or 'Spiritual Libertines' in medieval Europe is
documented in detail ; it also shows that the communities of the
Elect, having attained, in their own conviction, a state of union
with God or even of independence of God, felt entitled not only
to satisfy all their carnal desires but amoralism, based on the
overcoming of all moral conflict by the introjection of God, was
the sign of salvation; while the persistence of the pangs of
44
Messianism, Nihilism and the Future
conscience was evidence of separation from God, and hence of
damnation.
Now it is these ' amoral supermen ' not ' moral supermen ', as
Polanyi misquotes whom Norman Cohn describes as the re-
mote precursors of the followers of Bakunin and Nietzsche and
of 'the armed bohemians of our days' ; he does not assign that
role, as Polanyi' s text would suggest, to the chiliastic sects con-
fronted by the problem of power (such as the Taborite extrem-
ists in the Hussite wars or the Minister Anabaptists during the
Reformation), whom he views as the remote precursors of our
contemporary Communists.
In the first place, the 'Free Spirit' heresy, like its modern
secular counterpart, is not unlversalist : unlike the true chiliastic
sects, it offers a road to salvation not to all mankind, but only to
the few who are called to use, and abuse, the many. Further, it Is
not originally political, in the sense that the salvation of the
believers does not depend on a triumph over their adversaries
and the achievement of the final state of mankind : once they
have individually become Free Spirits, once they have joined the
ranks of the Elect, they are God-like and free from sin. It follows
that their freedom from all moral restraints does not depend on a
calculus of political expediency on the right to use all means
for a sacred end but is absolute, and this applies just as much
to modern nihilist elites. The otherwise most perceptive analysis
of contemporary secular religions in F. A. Voigt's Unto Caesar
errs In the statement that both the proletariat in the Marxian
and the master race In the Hitlerite myth are 'free from sin':
the Marxian proletariat is not free from sin, but has the mission
to bring about a millennium in which its own proletarian con-
dition will disappear along with all the conditions of human
corruption, but the Hitlerite master race is indeed free from sin
as such, even before its victory, and therefore absolutely above
all moral yardsticks.
There is, then, in Nazism no 'moral inversion' in the sense in
which Polanyi uses the term; for the manifest immoralism of its
methods of action, so far from being in conflict with the ' master
morality' underlying the movement, is its direct, if extreme,
manifestation. Rather we may say that there is here and also in
Nietzsche's revolt against Christian values, or in Bakunin's
glorification of the brigand as the true revolutionary a genuine
nihilism, a morality of negation: for all these attitudes do not
45
Richard Lowenthal
spring from a pagan unconcern with Christian values rooted in a
different culture, but from the desperate efforts of people reared
in the Christian tradition to throw off the burden of guilt which
has become unbearable to them.
I have tried to separate the moral attitudes embodied in the
two major secular religious currents of our time, and to indicate
their spiritual origins. What of the historic context in which they
have gained power over the minds of men?
Before risking any hypothesis about dynamic causes, there are
clearly some intellectual conditions, common to both of them,
which must be listed. There can be little disagreement about
those among students of modern history. The first, emphasized
by Polanyi, is secularization itself Man's attempt to conceive
the meaning of life in this world in immanent terms. The second,
closely linked to this, but perhaps not fully brought out in Ms
paper, is the democratic concept in the broadest sense of the
word : the idea that the political and social order, no longer re-
garded as God-given, should derive its sanction from the will of
the people. It is perhaps not superfluous to point out that all
totalitarian ideologies are based on the fiction that the totali-
tarian movement represents the true will of the people, the
volonte generate in Rousseau's sense ; the fiction is not confined
to the totalitarianism of the Left, as J. L. Talmon seems to
assume, but was equally used as a justification of Italian Fascism
by Giovanni Gentile, its original official philosopher, and in
Germany by Karl Schmitt In fact, of course, the very idea of a
totalitarian political movement gaining power and then con-
tinuing to mobilize the masses for the purposes of its regime is
only conceivable in an age where a democratic legitimation has
become indispensable for every regime.
The third major intellectual condition for the rise of the revo-
lutionary historical myths is the conscious experience of historic
change, and the fourth the confidence in the scientific predicta-
bility of the natural order engendered by the progress of science,
which is then extended to the field of history. On both points,
there is no need for me to add to Professor Polanyi's paper.
Together, secularization, the democratic concept, the experience
of historic change and the belief in its scientific predictability
form the indispensable intellectual background to the totali-
tarian ideologies or * secular religions' we are discussing; but
46
Messianism^ Nihilism and the Future
they also form the general intellectual background to the mod-
ern world since the end of the eighteenth century. Yet these
ideologies have arisen with powerful effect, in certain countries
and at certain times, while others have proved largely immune
to them.
The logic of secularization, of the new democratic legitima-
tion, and of the belief in the predictable progress of history has
thus not been sufficient to produce these ideologies by itself;
more specific factors must have been decisive for their rise at
specific places and times. Perhaps the best way to start the search
for these dynamic causes is to begin from Professor Polanyi's
reference to the 'merciful lack of logic' of the English. It seems
to me that, in seeking an explanation for the comparatively un-
dramatic course that the process of secularization took in Eng-
land and some other countries, he has overlooked the most
obvious common factor in the life of those countries the role of
Protestantism in its post-Calvinist form.
To understand that role, it may be helpful to cast our minds
back to an earlier great moral crisis of the West the crisis that
began in the Renaissance and was ended by the Reformation
and Counter-Reformation. Western society and the Roman
Church had long learned to live with the contradiction between
the eschatological morality of the gospel and the corruption of
natural man, and had adapted a workaday version of Christian
morality wMch combined the necessary sanctions for social
discipline with practical toleration of an irreducible core of sin-
fulness, acceptable to all but the small chiliastic underground
current. But this version was tied to a traditional way of life
which became increasingly disrupted with the rise of a com-
mercial economy in the advanced regions of Renaissance
Europe, from Flanders to Northern Italy and Bohemia ; and as
this disruption proceeded, the moral prescriptions of the
Church tended to appear increasingly absurd and illogical
at the very time when masses of believers, socially uprooted
and uncertain about the conduct of their lives in the new con-
ditions, were most in need of its guidance. It was in that moral
crisis that chiliastic sectarianism first grew from a scattered
underground into a mass movement, and that the worldly cor-
ruption of the Church became bitterly offensive to large numbers
of believers.
Now this crisis had arisen before the age of secularization,
47
Richard Lowenthal
and it was overcome within the framework of Christian belief
by a number of spiritual and hierarchical changes which ulti-
mately resulted in a revision of the moral code commonly
accepted by Christian communities. The contents of the new
code, based on a new accommodation of Christian values to a
more dynamic and acquisitive society, were not vastly different
in the Calvinist countries of Northwest Europe and the Catholic
countries who had passed through the Counter-Reformation;
but the manner in which the new code was 'enacted' differed
decisively. In the countries of modernized Catholicism, the new
code, like the traditional one before it, continued to depend on
the authority and discipline of the Church; hence its validity in
the minds of the faithful was bound up with the validity of
Christian dogma. In the countries of Calvinism and post-Cal-
vinist sectarianism. Church authority was successively nation-
alized, democratized, splintered and finally broken up in favour
of the autonomy of the individual conscience ; yet in the very
process of revolt against the old Church, the new code had been
internalized and embedded in that individual conscience, there
to take on an existence that no longer depended on any external
authority, old or new.
I believe that this difference is the key to the riddle of why the
modern process of secularization and democratization has
affected different Christian communities in so radically different
ways. Where the Christian code of conduct was bound up with
the authority and discipline of the Church, and the Church
closely linked with an authoritarian State, the decline of belief
in dogma, by undermining the authority of both Church and
State, was bound to produce both a political and a moral crisis.
Where morality had ceased to depend on Church authority, the
decline of dogmatic belief produced no moral crisis in the lives
of the people, and political institutions could be revalued as con-
venient rather than sacred. To this day, it is a common experi-
ence that the former Catholic who loses his faith may become
either an unbelieving hedonist or a believing Communist, while
the former Puritan, when ceasing to be a believing Christian,
tends to become a secularized Puritan. The post-Calvinist coun-
tries Britain, the United States, Holland, and also the Scan-
dinavian countries where the Lutheran State Church during the
nineteenth century lost much ground to various * Free Churches '
of the Anglo-Saxon type have produced no secular religions
48
Messianism, Nihilism and the Future
because the process of secularization, having failed to under-
mine the internalized morality of modern Protestantism, created
no void in the lives of their people.
It is not difficult to see how this analysis could be applied also
to other Christian and non-Christian communities. Russian
orthodoxy was not only authoritarian and closely linked to
Tsarist despotism, but had never undergone a reformation or
counter-reformation adjusting it to the problems of modem
life ; hence in nineteenth-century Russia, the moral crisis with
which Western Europe coped in the Reformation and the crisis
of secularization were telescoped into one, in the sense that the
secularization of the intelligentsia's thought faced it with the
need to reconstruct its moral and religious attitudes from their
very foundations : the void to be filled was larger than anywhere
in the West. German Lutheranism, a form of Protestantism
whose development was arrested at an early stage, before the
working out of a 'modern 5 code of Christian morality achieved
in the Calvinist West, retained a peculiar polarity between
obedience to outward authority in all matters of the political
and social order, and a personal morality that was internalized
in the individual conscience yet remained formless and incal-
culable : under the impact of secularization and the destruction
of traditional authority, it gave rise both to romantic individu-
alism and to a sense of anomaly a moral void resulting in a
craving for leadership. Among the non-Christian religions, it
seems logical to expect that those in which both the element of
metaphysical dogma and of authoritarian organization are
weak, while the moral teaching is central, as in the higher ver-
sions of Buddhism, would survive the impact of secularization
particularly well; the opposite might be expected of Islam,
whose teaching has long been bound up with the traditional
social and political order.
The foregoing discussion has suggested what I believe to be
one of the dynamic causes as distinct from the general intellec-
tual preconditions for the rise of the secular religions of our
time : the collapse of traditional authority in a society where
rules of conduct are dependent on external authority both for
their preservation and their gradual adjustment to changing
conditions. Where that happens the conjunction of seculariza-
tion and social change produces a moral crisis analogous to the
49
Richard Lowenthal
Western crisis of the Renaissance, and out of that crisis arise
secular religions which are equally analogous to the openly
religious chiliastic and satanistic movements of that earlier
period. In either case, it seems to be the unbearable conflict
between the experience of the changing world and the teachings
of traditional authority, rather than the fact of secularization as
such, which produces first the widespread sense of disorientation
and uprootedness and then the flight into a new fanatical faith.
At this point, we must return to Professor Polanyfs image of
an 'outburst of moral passion', which evidently is his interpre-
tation of the same phenomenon. If I understand him correctly,
he would agree that it was the destruction of traditional moral
authority that made that outburst possible, and he could also
without inconsistency accept the above view that it was the non-
authoritarian character of post-Calvinist morality that deprived
the process of secularization of similarly catastrophic conse-
quences in the area over which this spontaneous moral con-
formism of the Nonconformists held away. But where I feel I
must part company with him is his idea of 'moral passion' itself
the attempt to explain the fanaticism of the new movements
by a sudden increase in the moral sensitivity of man.
The concept of passion properly belongs to the realm of
psychology ; yet psychology, as Polanyi himself points out, has
hitherto not spoken of moral passions, only of instinctive
passions and moral restraints upon them. He seems to have over-
looked that psychology is thoroughly familiar with the pheno-
menon of instinctive passions masquerading as moral in order
to overcome the restraints. In the compulsive individual, an
intense effort to restrain aggressive impulses may lead to an
apparent excess of self-sacrificing, altruistic kindness ; yet as this
extreme of altruism is turned into a moral yardstick for judging
his fellows, it enables him in fact to yield to his aggressive
impulses under the mask of a censorious saintliness. The Freud-
ians know this classical mechanism of apparent 'moral inver-
sion ' as ' the return of the repressed '.
The example of individual psychology suggests that, when
confronted with an apparent sudden increase in moral idealism
in the history of our society, we should beware of taking it at
face value and rather look for conditions ttat may have pro-
duced an intensification of moral conflict, leading to a morally
disguised eruption of aggressive tendencies. There seems, in
50
Messianism^ Nihilism and the Future
fact, to be little reason to assume that the balance between
instinctive passions and restraints has ever substantially changed
in the course of the history of civilized humanity, though the
concrete nature of permitted instinctive outlets and socially en-
forced taboos has assumed an infinite variety of cultural forms ;
and the complaint that Polanyi sets out to refute that man's
morality has failed to keep step with the progress of Ms power
over nature seems correspondingly meaningless to me. The
meaningful complaint, and one that I have heard much more
frequently, is that man's understanding and control of the forces
active in human society, and hence the adjustment of the con-
crete content of his morality to the changing nature of that
society, has failed so to keep in step ; and that cannot be refuted
by pointing to the 'outburst of moral passion 5 which on the
contrary, if analysed in its historical context, points to that very
failure of adjustment.
In fact, the broadest common denominator for the origin of
both the openly religious and the secularized forms of chiliastic
or satanistic mass movements appears to be that they arise
where civilized societies have failed to respond adequately to
accelerated social change to adjust their institutions and their
moral codes to the changed situation in such a way as to
preserve the possibility of meaningful life in accordance with
their basic values. Wherever technological and social change
causes large numbers of people to lose their accepted place in
society, shattering both their material security and their sense
of their own worth, it also undermines their confidence in the
meaning of their way of life and their readiness to abide by
accepted rules of conduct. The intense self-doubt, anxiety and
frustration of the materially and morally uprooted masses find
expression in conflicting tendencies to aggressive rebellion and
passive submission tendencies which may then be canalized
into acceptance of a chiliastic or satanistic ideology offered by
any disaffected prophetic elite that is ready to hand and suffi-
ciently organized for exploiting the crisis. What appears as an
outburst of Utopian hopes and demands, a sudden insatiable
longing for perfect justice on this e^rth, is really a desperate
reaction to the glaring failure of the old order to live up even to
its own imperfect traditional standards in a radically changed
situation ; what appears as a sudden nihilistic rage to throw off
all moral restraints is really a desperate flight from intolerable
51
Richard Lowenthal
moral conflicts in a world whose accepted codes have become
transparently meaningless or hypocritical. The established com-
promise between the ideals of religious ethics and the incor-
rigible sinfulness of man, or between social discipline and the
instinctive drives of the individual, is not shattered by a sudden
increase in either saintly idealism or animal brutality; the
anarchic outbursts of both idealism and brutality are only the
consequence of the fact that the established compromise has
already broken down, because it has not been adjusted in time
to the facts of unpremeditated and unforeseen social change.
The above does not only apply to the once-and-for-all process
of secularization and of the breakdown of traditional authority
with its religious sanctions, but to all those profound social
crises which transcend the field of purely institutional change and
endanger the continuity of a civilization and its moral values.
The crisis of secularization and the transition from a tradition-
bound, authoritarian order to modern industrial society clearly
forms the background to the Communist revolutions we have
seen, and may yet lead to the victory of totalitarian movements
in other countries. But the chiliastic outbreaks in the non-
secularized Europe of the pre-Reformation and Reformation
period on one side, and the nihilistic explosion of Nazism in
modern, industrially developed Germany on the other, were
closely similar in origin. As the German case proves, the failure
of a modern free society to control its own dynamism of social
change may make it as vulnerable to a social and moral crisis
ending in an ideological, totalitarian revolution as any society
founded on traditional authority that is being undermined by
secularization.
Starting from the importance of the collapse of traditional
authority in countries with authority-bound rules of conduct as
one of the dynamic causes for the rise of our contemporary
secular religions, we have thus arrived at a more general factor :
the failure of adjustment of institutions and values to accelerat-
ing social change. I am, of course, far from claiming that this
factor could furnish by itself an exhaustive explanation of the
phenomenon under discussion; apart from other familiar ele-
ments, a more searching investigation of the interaction between
the rise of ideologically disaffected elites during the often pro-
longed period of pre-revolutionary gestation and the growth
of the mass movement in the actual revolutionary crisis is
52
Messianism, Nihilism and the Future
needed. What has been said here Is merely offered as a corrective
to the tendency to interpret the rise of these movements merely
as the unfolding of the inner logic of the Messianic ideas which
are endemic in our Judaeo-Christian civilization to explain, in
fact, the rise of the ideologies in purely ideological terms.
Survivors of a volcanic eruption, engaged in rebuilding their
homes and restarting the shattered routine of their lives, are
probably apt to reassure each other that the age of eruptions is
over, and that their particular volcano, at any rate, is now
extinct. Do we really have better evidence than that for congrat-
ulating ourselves on the end of the ideological age?
Apart from the devout wish of most of those who have con-
sciously lived through the past few decades to be saved from
salvation, and to be allowed to Hve the rest of their lives in less
interesting times, belief in the end of ideologies is usually
founded on two sets of facts ; the visible exhaustion of ideolog-
ical interest in the post-war Western world, also and particularly
among the young generation ; and the apparent indications of an
erosion, or at least a routinization, of ideological fervour in
post-Stalin Russia. Now it is a familiar historic experience that
periods of great revolutionary upheavals are followed by a sense
of exhaustion. But while in England the new sense of national
unity and the devotion of civic and moral energies to steady
evolution which followed the revolutionary settlement of 1688
showed a remarkable longevity, the exhaustion which followed
the end of the Napoleonic wars in France did not. The differ-
ence, clearly, lay in the quality of the solutions found for the
social and moral problems which had caused the revolutionary
crisis : without a solution capable both of winning fairly general
acceptance and of being gradually adjusted to further social
change, temporary exhaustion was clearly not enough to assure
a lasting return to civility.
As for the alleged erosion of the official ideology in the Soviet
Union, the facts are as yet far from clear. This is not the place to
discuss the problems of the basis and functions of ideology
under a victorious totalitarian regime; but it should at least be
understood that they are entirely different from the role of an
ideology of totalitarian revolution in a free society. Having
become institutionalized in a monopolistic party dictatorship to
which it serves as legitimation and driving force, the ideology
53
Richard Lowenthal
may continue to bring about both vast domestic transformations
and critical international conflicts long after the masses and even
large sectors of the privileged bureaucracy have lost faith in it.
Western observers have discerned symptoms of ideological ero-
sion in the NEP-Russia of the middle 20's, which was followed
by Stalin's forced collectivization ; in the Kirov period of in-
ternal relaxation in 1934, which was followed by the great blood
purge; in the wartime concessions to Russian patriotic and
orthodox traditions, which were followed by the Sovietization
of Eastern Europe and the ideological revivalism of Zhdanov.
The post-Stalin relaxation of ideological 'monolithism* has in
fact been followed by another attempt at an ideological revival
sponsored by Krushchev ; and though there are indications that
the new dictator's attempt to avoid a return to Stalinist mass
terrorism has made it more difficult for him to enforce ideolog-
ical conformity, all the evidence goes to show that both he and
his principal associates are true believers and aware of the
dependence of their own rule on the maintenance of the doctrine.
This is not to say that totalitarian ideological rule can never end
in Russia only that the eventual victory of ideological agnosti-
cism is not to be expected unless the power of the party is
decisively weakened in another crisis of succession.
Professor Polanyi does indeed go beyond the usual thesis of
erosion ; he suggests that some of the original acts of repudiation
of Stalin's heritage by his successors sprang from a genuine
moral revulsion against the consequences of 'nihilist* ideolog-
ical rule, and thus were true forerunners of the revolt of the
consciences of Polish and Hungarian Communist intellectuals
which grew from these first tentative steps of destalinization.
Unfortunately, the facts do not bear out this interpretation. For
instance, while Polanyi assumes that the heirs of Stalin repudi-
ated the frame-up against the Kremlin doctors because they
thought it better to have truth on their side, it seems a more
natural explanation that they did so because the frame-up had
been aimed at some of them; more specifically, the repudiation
was announced by Beria, but after Beria's fall Ms ex-colleagues
had no compunction in placing responsibility for the original
frame-up on him! Again, Krushchev's 'secret speech* was an
important step both in freeing his hand for policy changes by
destroying the legend of Stalin's infallibility, and in reassuring
the leading bureaucratic personnel of party and state that the
54
Messianism? Nihilism and the Future
replacement of "collective leadership' by Krushchev's one-man
rule would not mean a return to Stalin's inner-party terror; but
attempts to make the rehabilitation of some of Stalin's victims
the starting point for a truthful rewriting of Party history were
quickly stopped. Nevertheless Krushchev's disclosures, as well
as his recognition that Stalin had been wrong In his dispute with
Tito, shook not only Stalin's but Russia's authority In Eastern
Europe, as well as that of local Communist leaders who had
murdered their comrades as 'Titoists 5 on Stalin's orders ; and on
that basis the genuine moral revulsion of the Communist intel-
lectuals became possible In Poland and Hungary. Yet however
encouraging this development was in Itself, it seems too slender
a basis for proclaiming that a general turning-point has been
reached in the attraction of totalitarian Ideologies in our time,
and of Leninist Communism In particular.
Finally, it should not be forgotten that Chinese Communism
achieved total domination of a potential Great Power after
more than twenty years of civil war in 1949 at a time when, in
Polanyi's view, the ideological age was already on its way out
and has shown an unexampled ideological virulence in recent
years. More generally, it is a commonplace that many of the
causes which have In the past led to the victory of secular
religions in countries freshly torn from a static authoritarian
tradition Into the whirlpool of industrialization and seculariza-
tion, are now operating In many of the newly emancipated
'undeveloped countries' ; and while there is, on the basis of the
foregoing analysis, no predestined inevitability that any or all of
them must suffer the same fate, there is certainly no a priori
reason why the danger of such a development should be less in
the second half of the twentieth century than in the first.
I confess, then, that I can find no solid grounds for Professor
Polanyi's hopeful view that 'at the very centre of the storm, the
tide turned', or that, because of the 'revisionist' movement that
shook Eastern Europe In 1956, mankind generally 'has arrived
at a point beyond nihilism ' either in the advanced free societies
now passing through a phase of exhaustion, or in the large part
of the world that is actually ruled in accordance with the Mes-
sianic ideology of Communism, or in the newly emancipated
nations now grappling with the problems of technical, intel-
lectual and moral modernization. Yet I recognize that Polanyl,
for all his hopeful generalizations, is far from taking an attitude
55
Richard Lowenthal
of easy, passively expectant optimism, and I agree with him in
seeing no reason for fatalistic pessimism either. Just as he warns
that * all the logical antecedents of inversion are present today as
they were before 5 , so do I, on the basis of my different analysis 9
conclude that the type of social and moral crisis which has
produced the modern secular religions still confronts many
countries and may recur in others. But just as he sees a chance
that mankind might learn from past disasters and, recoiling
from ideological extremism, might 'establish a civic partnership,
united in its resolve on continuous reform ', so do I believe that
those dangerous crises may be avoided or surmounted without
breaking the continuity of civilization, provided the institutional
adjustments and the reformulations of accepted values required
by the continuous pressure of technological and social change
are undertaken in time.
Yet I do not tMnk that I do Professor Polanyi an injustice if I
retain the feeling that there remains between us some difference
of emphasis with regard to the nature of the remedy. To him,
the paramount need seems to be the conversion of the intellec-
tuals from Utopian extremism to moderation, from blind trust
in the abstract logic of theoretical systems to an appreciation of
the value of pragmatic reforms achieved by consent. Yet if I
try to survey the experience of those societies that have suc-
cumbed to Messianic or satanistic ideologies in the recent past
and to consider the problems of those that are now threatened
by a similar fate, I am less impressed with the role of misguided
intellectuals and more with the relentless pressure of the steadily
accelerating change in the conditions of life. I cannot forget that
at the start of each revolutionary crisis, the extremist intellec-
tuals were a small and politically unimportant minority, and
that it was generally the stubbornness of the defenders of tradi-
tional rule and the failure of the pragmatic reformers to act with
sufficient boldness which gave the extremists first a mass follow-
ing and finally victory. Hence I am inclined to place the main
emphasis in societies freshly emerging from traditional stagna-
tion, and also in advanced societies suffering from institutional
instability, on the need for sufficiently rapid constructive
changes political, economic, and in the underdeveloped nations
also cultural to retain the allegiance of the masses to a com-
mon system of values. Nor can I believe that the necessary re-
forms can be achieved by general consent in all circumstances,
56
Messianism, Nihilism and the Future
however acute the crisis ; after all, the English settlement of 1688
is known as the 'glorious revolution', and the tradition of con-
tinuous reform started from that basis.
Lest the above remarks be thought too close to the sphere of
practical policy for a discussion of ideas, I wish to add one final
reference to what may be called the moral conditions of contin-
uous, pragmatic reform. I have suggested that one crucial
condition for the undramatic course of secularization in the Pro-
testant countries of the West has been that their moral cohesion
has been made independent of dogmatic religious authority by
the internalization of the moral code. Life did not cease to be
meaningful when dogma withered away ; the sanctification of the
daily round with all its imperfections proved a lasting alternative
to the pursuit of the Millennium. But it seems that this spon-
taneous moral conformity of the Nonconformists has also
proved more amenable to further continuous chance in accord-
ance with changing conditions, yet without an abandonment of
basic values, than any authoritarian morality known to us. One
of the reasons why the export of English parliamentary institu-
tions has often proved powerless to achieve a comparable clim-
ate of social discipline and continuous reform is evidently that it
could not be accompanied by the simultaneous export of the
Protestant tradition. But as human societies, however secular-
ized or enlightened, cannot preserve their cohesion by the
operation of rational motivations alone, I wonder whether in
any post-authoritarian society immunity against secular relig-
ions can be achieved without a cultural revolution that succeeds
in establishing some such form of internalized morality. In the
long run this may well prove one of the key conditions for the
possibility of continuous Progress in Freedom.
57
Enlightenment and Radicalism
SIDNEY HOOK
THE field of intellectual history is beset by many difficulties.
Primary among them is the extent to which the assump-
tion inescapable to the very nature of the inquiry that
history is made or determined by the ideas men hold, is true.
Leaving aside the influence of complex objective factors of the
physical environment, the pattern of historical events seems
clearly to be woven out of the interacting influences of interests,
ideas, and personality. To assign relative weights to these ele-
ments is a delicate task. The best grounded historical accounts
have revealed the unplausibility of all monisms even when the
predominance of one or another factor has been established for
a specific period.
The difficulties of intellectual history are compounded when
we attempt to assess the influence of philosophical ideas on
human affairs. Here the temptation to yield to one's own
philosophical prejudices, to use the record as an argument or
evidence for one's own philosophical beliefs is almost over-
whelming. But if our investigation is to rise above a disguised
question-begging apologetic and reach conclusions which
appear valid to inquirers of other philosophical persuasions, we
must resist this temptation. In other words, we must regard the
influence of philosophical ideas in history not as a philosophical
problem but as an historical, empirical problem in principle no
different from an inquiry into the effects of the industrial revolu-
tion on the movement of population or the causes of the Span-
ish-American war.
It is from this point of view that I propose to examine Pro-
fessor Polanyi's main thesis in his essay * Beyond Nihilism'. I
shall then say a few things in defence of the principle of radical-
ism which according to him threatens 'to throw us back into
disaster' if acted upon.
E 59
Sidney Hook
I
As I understand Professor Polanyi, he Is asserting two proposi-
tions. (1) The influence of the rationalist ideal of a secular
society, which we associate with the Enlightenment, in fact led
to the monstrous Bolshevik and Nazi Revolutions of the twentieth
century. (2) The characteristic doctrines and practices of mod-
ern totalitarianism or nihilism are 'logical consequences' of this
rationalist ideal, particularly in its naturalist forms.
With respect to the first thesis everything that Professor
Polanyi says seems to me to be an illustration of a loose form of
the post hoc.propter hoc fallacy. I do not find any valid evidence
to support the view that the rationalist and universal humanistic
ideals of the Enlightenment played any decisive role in the
theory and practice of the architects of the Communist and Nazi
Revolutions. On the other hand, there is considerable evidence
against this view.
Indeed, Professor Polanyi himself confronted by the fact that
the ideals of Locke and Bentham, imported into France with
such allegedly disastrous consequences, helped In England and
the United States to create an unprecedented, humane welfare
economy, not even approached by any religious culture of the
past, explains this in terms of the moderating effect of existing
institutions. Without examining the truth of the specific asser-
tions made on what institutions in England and in the United
states prevented 'the self-destructive implications of the En-
lightenment' from being realized, such recognition is Inad-
missible on the part of any point of a view, such as Professor
Polanyi's, which ascribes decisive historical importance to
philosophical ideas. For it can be argued with equal logic that
what explains the difference between the development of Anglo-
American liberalism and the development of European totali-
tarianism is not the presence of the Ideals of the Enlightenment
which were common, but the different social institutions which
in the one case permitted the gradual social reforms to develop
which were inherent in the commitment to the ideals of the
Enlightenment, and in the other Inhibited them, until the
obstructive institutions were swept away by revolution. I myself
do not believe that this is the whole story, but historically it has
much more to be said for it than the view that the ideals of the
Enlightenment entailed revolutionary action. It is certainly
60
Enlightenment and Radicalism
closer to the findings of those historians and sociologists who
have called attention to the existence of authoritarian social
structures in Germany and Russia as predisposing factors
towards totalitarianism.
Problems of historical causation as they relate to ideas are
tangled enough without snarling them still more with specula-
tions about ultimate doctrinal genealogy and influence. Empir-
ically we must begin here with the quest for proximate causes.
The best source books of the ideas which influenced the leaders
of the Nazi Revolution are still Hitler's Mein Kampfznd Alfred
Rosenberg's Der Mythos des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Hitler's
intellectual mentor was neither Hegel, Nietzsche nor Spengler.
It was Houston Chamberlain, whose racialist mythology, irra-
tionalisin, and mysticism is as far as anyone can get from the
ideals of the Enlightenment. To be sure, as Professor Polanyi
points out, the Nazi cohorts were imbued with a consuming
Messianic passion and zeal. But it was precisely this type of
passion and zeal which were suspect in the eyes of the founding
fathers of the Enlightenment. This is especially true of Locke,
Hume, Voltaire, Bentham and the philosopher-statesmen of the
American Republic. They distrusted 'enthusiasm' as the con-
comitant of religious fanaticism. Rousseau's glorification of
feeling was foreign to them, so much so that one of the standard
criticisms of the rationalism of the Enlightenment is that the
chill fingers of reason stifled the life of the emotions. It was not
the martyrs of Christian piety but the legendary figures of
Roman republican virtue which figured in these writings of the
Enlightenment as models of excellence.
With one proviso, it is just as far-fetched to attribute to
the rationalism of the Enlightenment casual influence on the
animating ideals of the leaders of the Russian October Revolu-
tion. The Bolsheviks came to power by an historical fluke and
in flagrant disregard of the principles of traditional Marxism.
No one was more surprised than Lenin himself that the Bol-
sheviks succeeded in remaining in power. In Bolshevik eyes the
ideals of the Enlightenment were the expression par excellence
of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois spirit and not of an inter-
national classless society. The thinking, so to speak, was two
intellectual epochs removed from rationalism. To the extent
that they were Marxists, they were critical of the unhistorical
approach of the Enlightenment, and insisted that what was
61
Sidney Hook
reasonable in society could only be determined by stages in
historical evolution which limited alternative action. To the
extent that they were Bolsheviks, they discarded the restraining
and moderating sense of traditional Marxism for objective limi-
tation, for the extremist forms of voluntarism. They ruled by
fiat and not by reason.
From 1902 on, when Lenin wrote his Chto Delat (' What is to
be done 5 ), it was quite clear that he had substituted for the whole
evolutionary emphasis of Marxism the view that history could
be transformed independently of the conditions which were pre-
supposed by Marx, and the continuation of this point of view
from Lenin to Krushchev seems to me to indicate the degree to
which this departure is marked. Consequently I regard the
theoretical leaders of the Bolshevik revolution not so much as
the executives of the legacy of the French Revolution or of the
Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, as its executioners, so
to speak. It was an emphasis upon will, rather than intelligence
or reason.
All this aside, it is controvertible that the twist which Euro-
pean socialism under the leadership of German Social Demo-
cracy gave to historical materialism, far from encouraging the
dynamic and activistic tendencies in Marxism, tamed them, and
substituted the inevitability of gradualism for the inevitability of
violent revolution. For them the ripeness not the readiness was
all so much so that on occasions conditions were permitted to
become so rotten-ripe that the maggots of totalitarianism found
a favourable environment to develop. The socialist revisionism
of Bernstein in Germany and Jaures in France stressed the ideals
of the Enlightenment not in order to encourage more revolu-
tionary action, but to make the socialist movement aware of its
actual reformist practices and to liberate it from its revolution-
ary phrasemongery which frightened off possible electoral allies.
When Socialist Parties were in power in Europe, their error lay
not in too much planning but in too little, not in a bold ration-
ality to remake society but in the timed improvisation of a
series of holding operations to preserve a chaotic status quo.
The chief causes of the Bolshevik and Nazi Revolutions have
very little to do with doctrinal beliefs. They are to be found in
the First World War and its consequences. Not 1789 but 1914
deserves the title of the Year of the Second Fall of Man.
The Bolsheviks got their opportunity not by invoking the
62
Enlightenment and Radicalism
rationalist Ideals of the Enlightenment but by exploiting the
hunger of the Russian masses for peace, and the desire of
sensitive minds everywhere to liberate the world from the insane
folly of a war whose real issues had far more to do with ques-
tions of national prestige and economic hegemony than with the
issues of democracy and freedom. Looking back at the fateful
days In which the names of Lenin and Trotsky were practically
unknown outside of small circles in Russia, Kerensky Is con-
vinced that his major error was that he did not take Russia out
of the war after the Kornilov revolt. The reason that Churchill
was unable to strangle Bolshevism in its cradle was that it rallied
to its banner in the early years supporters who were unified not
by Marxist doctrine or ideology, but only by their opposition to
war. In every country where the Communist movement gained a
foothold, it began as an anti-war movement. The favourite
rationalization of the tender-minded supporters of Commun-
ism, when the news of Bolshevik terror seeped through to the
West, was that the price of revolution was small compared to
the holocaust of another world war which could be avoided only
In a socialist world.
Indeed, if the leaders of the International socialist movement
had been fired with a touch of the audacity of the great figures of
the French Revolutionary movement instead of being caught
up In the hysteria of nationalism, they might have succeeded, if
not in preventing the First World War, then in shortening it.
There Is no agreement among historians on how to weigh the
causes of the rise to power of German National Socialism. The
inflation and economic depression, resentment at the Treaty of
Versailles, the desire of the industrialists to curb Social Democ-
racy and the trade-unions, the Communist theory of social-
fascism and collaboration with the Nazis, the failure of the
Allies to make the concessions to the Weimar Republic which
they subsequently made to Hitler all played an incomparably
greater role than the witches' brew of doctrine not one of
whose elements were new with which the Nazis intoxicated
themselves. The Nazis proudly regarded themselves in a rare
moment of truthfulness as 'the counter-revolution' to the ideals
of eighteenth-century Enlightenment.
63
Sidney Hook
II
I now turn to the second of Professor Polanyi's theses which
asserts that the ideals of the Enlightenment are inherently
unstable and logically entail the nihilism of totalitarian belief
and practice. This assertion resembles the contentions of
Toynbee and Maritain that if one does not worship God,
one must worship either Stalin or Hitler or some other human
being.
There are two initial difficulties in any such position. First,
even if there were a logical connection between certain philo-
sophical premises and certain conclusions that have a potential
bearing on conduct, this relationship alone would be no warrant
for asserting that human beings in fact are guided by it. This is
particularly true if the relationship is exhibited in a complicated
chain of reasoning. Men are notoriously slack in their reasoning
and have a livelier sense of the uses to which they can put
doctrines than of their strict implications. To imagine that they
guide themselves in crucial situations by the logic of their
premises and assumptions of which they are often blissfully
unaware is to impute a rationality to them which exceeds the
claims of most secular rationalists in history.
Second, as Professor Polanyi uses the word 'rationalism', it
is an umbrella term which covers a variety of doctrines and
thinkers. If we speak of 'sceptical rationalism' then we must
exclude Locke who believed that moral truths were as certain as
those of mathematics. If we speak of 'absolute and inalienable
rights' then we must exclude Bentham who regarded the lang-
uage of the Declaration of Independence as 'nonsense on stilts'.
If we speak of Voltaire and Hume, then we must exclude the
romanticism of Rousseau. Professor Polanyi speaks of all these
tendencies and figures as integral to the culture-complex of the
Enlightenment despite the fact that in some relevant and impor-
tant respects they differ more among themselves than some of
them do from the early Burke and the later Hegel (whose
Rechtsphilosophie, for example, borrows heavily from Rous-
seau). Nowhere does Professor Polanyi give us a clear statement
of what he takes the essential doctrines of the Enlightenment to
be. In one place he suggests that the rationalism of Voltaire and
Gibbon might have fulfilled the hopes of man for a civilized
society had they not been blighted by 'Christian fervour'. Does
64
Enlightenment and Radicalism
this mean that rationalism was at fault in being too tepid in its
critique of Christian fanaticism, too tolerant of the spirit of
intolerance? Or does it mean that any doctrine held with a zeal
and passion disproportionate to the evidence of experience
threatens to unleash the furies of totalitarianism? Then why
make the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which sought to
instate the self-critical processes of reason or intelligence as the
supreme authority of truth in human affairs, and as the supreme
arbiter of the inescapable conflicts among human values, the
scapegoat of historical disasters like war and revolution which
flowed in large part from a refusal to deal intelligently with their
social causes?
It is obvious from the foregoing that I see nothing calamitous
in returning to the ideals of the Enlightenment if, indeed, we
are returning to them, which, as I read the evidence, is more of a
hope than a fact. But whatever the fact, I for one believe we
should return to the secular rationalism of the Enlightenment.
When I say we should 'return', I mean, of course, return with
the difference that the growth of knowledge and the perspective
of broad experience make to minds capable of learning from the
past. We can now distinguish more clearly between what is per-
enni ally valid in the approach of eighteenth-century rationalism
and its local or aberrant forms.
What we have learned about the logic of modern science, the
patterns of scientific methods, and the findings of modern
psychology should immunize us against the easy optimism of the
past, whose secular forms, we note in passing, never rivalled the
stupendous myths with which religion consoled believers. It
should enable us to develop those habits of reasonable expecta-
tion which are the hall-marks of a mature outlook on man and
history. Modem science suggests to us that we do not have to
embrace a sterile scepticism because the certainties of absolu-
tism are no longer available to us, that reliable knowledge about
human affairs although difficult is obtainable. It suggests that
there are always problems, small problems and large problems,
but not one great problem to which a final or total solution can
be found. It suggests that like scientific inquiry in any field,
intelligent social inquiry is a continuous process, and, as in
science, that it is easier to agree on the empirical consequences
of proposed courses of conduct than on their alleged presuppo-
sitions. It suggests that in human affairs history and tradition are
65
Sidney Hook
inescapably relevant and are at least as Important as other
technical factors which enter into the costs of innovation.
What we have learned from modern psychology is more vague
but just as pertinent. It reinforces the wisdom of relating values
and ideals to human interests and of exposing these interests to
critical consciousness and the counter claims by which they may
be controlled. It suggests that values which are not felt as actual
or possible fulfilment of needs can find no purchase in the
business of living and run the risk of becoming mealy-mouthed
abstractions that conceal our real commitments. Together with
all the other social disciplines, it suggests that where there are no
shared interests there will be no common values, that the first
step in approaching conflicts of interest after laying them bare,
is to mediate between them, to correct, modify, invent or dis-
cover the social devices or institutional forms by which they can
be made viable. It suggests that we be suspicious of our own
zeal and selfrighteousness, that we cultivate our powers of
imaginative perception in order to see more clearly the human
being in the enemy, and to understand that since a sound posi-
tion may be defended by unsound arguments, we have an
obligation to rethink claims which, because of the paltry reasons
offered in support of them, we sometimes reject out of hand.
If this approach is taken we may find that we accomplish
more by trying to achieve less. But whatever we try to achieve
will require more thought, more planning, experiment and con-
trolled improvisation than secular rationalists have attempted in
the past. There is no royal road to social justice and social peace
because, among other reasons, there are so many occasions on
which they conflict. A respect for history does not always enjoin
caution upon us. Over-cautious drivers can be just as much of a
road hazard as speed demons. Some historical situations have
degenerated into chaos because those in a position to act have
played it too safe. They have relied more upon the automatic,
allegedly self-regulating tendencies of society or upon the happy
chance that something will turn up than upon their creative
intelligence for which, despite all its limitations, there is no
substitute.
As I understand radicalism in social life it is continuous reli-
ance upon the methods of critical intelligence, or of scientific
method in its most comprehensive sense, to negotiate conflicts
of value in the hope of finding or discovering shared interests
66
be equitably enjoyed. Such methods cannot create
values, they can only check or test or appraise them in the light of
the best available knowledge of their causes and consequences
in experience. The fruitfulness of this approach is to be meas-
ured not only by its results but by the consequences of alterna-
tive approaches. It does not accept Russell's dictum, that there is
no such thing as an irrational goal or end except one impossible
of fulfilment. For when we examine goals or ends in their actual
problematic context, we shall find that they are never realy final
or ultimate. They are both ends and means in different contexts.
They are, therefore, subject not only to the rationality of the
means-end relation but to the rational control of the several
compossible ends to which every sane mind is wedded.
We can return to secular rationalism with confidence as a
starting-point for fresh advance, subject to the caveats indicated
above. Nothing promises to be more helpful in grappling with
the problems of a scientific and technological world. Its explicit
and implicit ideals still recommend themselves to the reason of
free men the rule of just law nationally and internationally
until it acquires world sovereignty, universal and continuous
education, the primacy of the individual, not of individualism,
in the social process, growth as a qualitative norm of develop-
ment rather than some fixed, pre-determined end, the refusal to
make politics autonomous of morals and morals autonomous
of social and economic life. These ideals still retain validity for
our own day and time as guides to programme and policy. If we
go beyond them, it will be by following the vision they have
inspired. If we repudiate them, we once more fling wide open the
doors to the furies of nihilism.
67
MICHAEL POLANYI : . . . the alternatives before us . . .
I wish to thank Professor Hook very sincerely for his contri-
bution. It offers a complete counterpart to my own suggestions.
In my opinion, or interpreted within my framework, his
position would be one of suspended logic. Now, since this is my
ideal, I can hardly reproach him for upholding it. The taking for
granted of all the humanistic and moral limitations which he
referred to in his report would probably have exactly the effect
which he expects, namely to restore reason to a position which is
altogether beneficent in the way it has been beneficent for long
periods of rationalist rule in its utilitarian form, and still re-
mains so in many countries. But I still see two alternatives
before us : whether to accept that these limitations are inherent
in rationalism, or to think that they arise from some other
source from tradition, from patriotism, from religion. If the
latter is the case, then rationalism can only be described as a
limited anchorage.
Now I will ask a few of our participants who have themselves
recently experienced, not only the movement towards totali-
tarianism but also the revulsion from it, whether they feel that
this kind of analysis is relevant or whether they would suggest
something else in addition to what has been said.
PAUL IGNOTUS: . . . Irrational rationalists . .
Our friend Arthur Koestler, in his books Darkness at Noon and
The Yogi and the Commissar., considers the Communist ideol-
ogy as a sort of rationalism a outrance. His Communists are
people who trust reason absolutely, in fact, he would perhaps
admit, to quite an irrational extent. Perhaps Communists are, in
fact, 'irrational rationalists'? I am sure that at the cradle of the
French Revolution one can already find rationalism a outrance
69
Criticism and Discussion
combined with, a sort of irrationalism, with passionate sentimen-
talism and belief in instincts.
As far as Fascism and Nazism had any philosophy at ail, they
believed in violence, in force, in anything but reason. In the case
of Communists, their vision of history was to some extent drawn
up on rational lines, but all the slogans they launched, their
passionate attacks were always justified on irrational grounds,
through heroism, self-sacrifice.
I never understood, for instance, why Communists should
think it is a glorious thing to sacrifice one's life, and I agree
with Professor Polanyi that there is an irrational, inordinate
moral passion behind this pseudo-rational creed.
Now, to turn to Hungarian revisionism. I am a revisionist
only in a very old sense, let us say sympathetic to those social-
democrats who used to be called revisionists before the First
World War ; but, as we know, the term was suddenly applied
by Krushchev to deviating Communists and I think it mainly
applies to them, though one may include among them people
who do not come directly from Communist circles.
I just want to tell you this : our revisionist leaders were either
politicians or writers. A politician like Imre Nagy thought, up
to his last moment, that he was an honest Leninist and he really
felt that Lenin had supplied all those elements of humanitarian-
ism for which he stood up against Rakosi and the Russian quis-
lings. I do not think that he would ever have thought of going
back on those teachings. It was different with the writers who
followed him and were Ms friends, for instance Tibor Dery.
Dery, from his early youth and throughout the whole of Ms
literary career, was a man who really disbelieved all sorts of
general ideas. As far as I could see, what attracted him to
Communism was its huge ambitions. It was his experience
which made him believe (and this to a large extent confirms
Professor Polanyi's thesis) that some simple sort of moral truth
such as brotherly love, such as decency, couldn't be done away
with, and that everything loses its sense if one doesn't observe
and respect and try to serve these truths. This feeUng was pre-
valent amongst leading Hungarian revisionists and thus, in
spite of all their revolutionary upbringing, there was in them an
important element of traditionalism and an inclination to
vindicate traditional moral values.
70
Criticism and Discussion
K. A. JELENSKI: , . . a genuine form of Marxism . . .
Is the 'recoil from moral inversion 5 the main characteristic of
Polish revisionism? Before the war, only very few Polish writers
or intellectuals were revolutionaries in the sense that Tibor Dery
and other Hungarian intellectuals were. The adherence of part
of the Polish intelligentsia to Communism occurred after the
Communists were brought to power by the advance of the Red
Army. They were not revolutionary intellectuals, they were
neophytes who accepted the reigning creed, the religion of the
Prince. The ambiguity with which they tried to rationalize their
adherence is best described in Czeslaw Milosz's book The
Captive Mind.
The real believers were to be found only among some young
intellectuals, who came of age under the Stalinist regime. What
they revolted against after Krushchev's secret speech was the
regime's hypocrisy. Polish revisionists wanted to restate Marx-
ism in rationalist terms ; they were fighting the whole idealistic
side of Stalinism I use idealistic in the Marxist derogatory
sense. They wanted to apply rational methods to study reality ;
their ultimate aim was to achieve a form of 'Workers' Democ-
racy', which they thought possible on the condition of a return
to a genuine form of Marxism.
This of course proved impossible because of the conditions in
which the political apparatus in a Communist country must
keep power concentrated in its own hands.
It is the disillusioned revisionists, who have become in fact
social-democrats who come perhaps nearest to Professor
Polanyi's analysis of the abatement of ideological dynamism.
FRANCOIS FEJTO : . . . new explosions of the revisionist trend . . .
Today is the second anniversary of the execution of Miklos
Gimes and Imre Nagy in Budapest. Now, Miklos Gimes came
to Paris in 1955 and it was then that I met him secretly on
several occasions. At that time he was prey to fearful doubts;
it was before the 20th Congress of the Party; everything
he believed in had crumbled beneath his feet and conversation
with him was painful. He did not even know what he was going
to do and it was only after much hesitation that he decided to
return to Hungary. But he did decide to do so and before he left
71
Criticism and Discussion
he came to tell me that he felt he had many things to make good,
even if it cost him his life. He was ready then, in 1955, to lay
down his life in order to open people's eyes to the truth. He
thought that during his years of serving Rakosi as diplomatic
editor of the official organ of the Party, Szabad Nep, he had
made so many mistakes,, committed so many crimes and sinned
so greatly against the Holy Ghost, so to speak, that he had to
pay for it. It was in him that I observed how deeply ingrained in
certain intellectuals was that moral sense analysed by Professor
Polanyi. It was stronger, of course, in those Communists who
were Christians and who like Gimes, became Communists after
the Second World War, for moral reasons, because they really
thought that Communism alone, independently of Russian in-
tervention, could bring about the recovery of a nation so tho-
roughly corrupted by the Horthy regime and the amoral Fas-
cism of the Nazis,
Among Hungarian intellectuals there are many such men, for
whom Communism was not a career but a means of reforming
their country. In 1955 and 1956 they were the ones most affected
emotionally and their moral faith was much stronger, in reaction
to their earlier beliefs and actions, than that of other intellec-
tuals such as the * populists', in Hungary, who resembled in
some ways the earlier Russian Narodniks, although the popu-
lists were never so deeply committed to the regime. While
working with the Communist regime, they always had certain
reservations. For example, I think that my friend Ignotus,
although he had been in prison and suffered persecution, on
being released when the thaw set in in Hungary, remained much
more moderate, more cautious and more realistic in his reaction
to events than his Communist or ex-Communist colleagues or
the revisionists among the leaders of the Authors' Union.
Professor Polanyi's main theory seems to me to be that there
is a sort of perverted moral sense in Stalinism and in Com-
munism in general. I think this theory is indisputable and that it
would be worthwhile drawing conclusions from it in relation to
Marxism, since it is Marxism and MarxismLeninism which,
after the defeat of revisionism, of the revisionist movements,
continues to form the minds of young intellectuals in the East,
but by the same ideological and mental processes thus providing
these elements with new opportunities for new revolts. Some of
my friends think of revisionism as a movement conditioned by
72
Criticism and Discussion
the period and limited in time. They believe that since its defeat
In 1956 its days are numbered and that revisionism has no future
in Eastern Europe. I am of the opposite opinion. In which I
share the view of the Communists themselves. I think that it is
most significant that, one year after the utter defeat of the revi-
sionists as a political movement, the Communist Parties meeting
in Moscow should have adopted a resolution in which, after
much discussion, they described revisionism as the chief danger
to international Communism, And it is even more significant
that this directive, namely 'Revisionism* Enemy No, r should
still be one of the chief subjects of Communist propaganda.
You will agree that this gives one pause, when one thinks that
on the one hand the main revisionist leaders in Hungary have
been executed, while others are In prison and the revisionist
movement has no means of expression in Poland, in Hungary or
anywhere else. The Communists that is to say the Chinese,
who are the most extreme Communists think that only Yugo-
slavs survive among former revisionists. But Yugoslav revision-
ism is, I think, quite a different matter as it consists in the
quarrel between the extremist elements of the international
Communist movement and the Yugoslavs, I am convinced that
Marxism-Leninism as it is after its victory over revisionism in
1956 has reached an ideological impasse. While it deprives the
revisionist elements of any possibility of expression in the press,
we constantly see It making considerable concessions, at least on
minor points, to the revisionists, and it is my opinion that in a
few more years, when young people, students and intellectuals
have got over the defeat of 1956, in view of the inertia of
Stalinism, the same causes will produce the same effects and we
may well see new explosions, of an intellectual kind at least, of
the revisionist trend.
HANS KOHN: ... a long period of spiritual preparation , . .
On one point I am in full agreement with Mr. Polanyi, namely
in his insistence on the decisive influence of moral factors in all
totalitarian movements. I am among those who believe that
even in Nazism not in Hitler, but in Nazi youth in Fascism
and in Communism there is much moral idealism, if of a per-
verted kind. But above all I would like to support Professor
Hook's first point. It seems to me quite impossible for a historian
73
Criticism and Discussion
to regard the Enlightenment as responsible for the rise of
totalitarianism. On the contrary, It was the decline of the
Enlightenment which made Communism and Fascism possible.
The Enlightenment means the end of authoritarianism, the end
of dogmatism and Intolerance. Those are the three essential
features of the Enlightenment and in that sense the totalitarian
movements are in opposition to It rather than its consequences.
Why have some countries, such as England and Switzerland,
been less subject to totalitarianism than, shall we say, Spain,
Germany or Russia? Because in Spain, Germany and Russia,
the Enlightenment was already being combated and defeated in
the eighteenth century ; because the Slavophiles in Russia, the
Germanophiles in Germany and the reactionaries In Spain
opposed the Enlightenment and thereby prepared the ground
for the victory of Communism and Fascism, which did not
emerge by chance in those countries, but were the outcome of a
long period of spiritual preparation on the part of the intellec-
tuals. Here again I agree with Professor Polanyi that the intelli-
gentsia has much to answer for, the Intellectuals have a great re-
sponsibility, the mteUectuaMn Germany from as far back as 1812,
and in increasing numbers, the intellectuals in Russia, the Slavo-
philes and others who, by their contempt for Western enlighten-
ment, prepared the ground for the new totalitarian regimes.
MICHAEL POLANYI: . . . the path to self-destruction . . .
The point we are discussing is to my mind not whether the
Enlightenment was the direct inspiration of Hitler and Lenin.
It certainly was not, and I am accordingly in full agreement with
the speakers who said so. What I have said was, in short, that the
defeat of the Enlightenment was the logical consequence of an
Inherent weakness and that is the point on which we must
concentrate if we are to think of the future. Enlightenment had
indeed lost considerable ground and had already set foot on the
path to self-destruction on the short path that leads from
Voltaire to Rousseau and from Rousseau to Auguste Comte,
who already foreshadowed the modem tyranny of political
theory based on scientific premises. I have not been the first to
make this point, but I insist that we must discuss it here if we
wish to know where to look for inspiration in the past.
I have said in my essay that I see the present generation
74
looking back to the Ideals of the eighteenth century, but that I
was not sure whether this looking back would really lead to any
sound course of action. And we are here to discover how, with
our greater insight, we can help this generation.
SALVADOR BE MADARIAGA! . . the hypocrisy ofthe West . . .
I am in agreement with all those who have established the con-
nection between rationalism and irrationalism. We all know
that we are only dealing in words and that actual life is made of
human beings : irrationalists are apt to be very rational and there
is a very odd irrationalism about rationalists. Communism is a
religious attitude today and it is very difficult to consider Com-
munism as merely the outcome of rationalistic Enlightenment
rooted in the eighteenth century. In my experience, I have found
that rationalism has entered into the composition of events that
we are now witnessing in a particularly odd way, in that pre-
cisely because of its very beauty, its simplicity, its perfection, it
has expected too much and has called forth, a great deal of
frustration. I should have thought that a tremendous lot of the
trouble we have suffered particularly in Europe in the last
twenty years was due to the terrible frustration caused by the too
high hopes that had been put on the League of Nations, I should
have thought also that the too high hopes based on the modern
state have led to a similar frustration. The biggest frustration of
all was of course due to the fact that the biggest revolution of all,
the one brought about in Moscow in 1917, had ended in the
appalling failure of 1925 and onwards.
A good deal of frustration is also due to the fact that those
who remained free, or at least outside the failures of the Bol-
shevik revolution, have not come up to expectation either. Hypo-
crisy is, it seems to me, the hallmark of international life in the
West, although, it is administered by those who consider them-
selves as the representatives of rationalism.
Whenever we think of violence, we very naturally are led to
imagine it as active violence, but the contemporary world is
absolutely saturated by passive violence, that is to say, people
who are powerful enough to sit tight on the wrong which they
know they have caused. Now, a good deal of this sitting tight
on your wrongs is being liquidated, for instance in Africa and,
to a certain extent, in Asia. But it isn't altogether got rid offer a
p 75
Criticism and Discussion
number of reasons, one of which is that this issue of nationalism
and sovereignty requires a good deal of airing in public in such
places as ours where this can be done in a serene sort of way,
The trouble is not merely nationalism, which is forcing many
Western governments to a position of hypocrisy ; the trouble is
an insufficient amount of sovereignty. We are all the time re-
minded that we can only organize the world in a new phase if
people give away their sovereignty, while most nations haven't
got any sovereignty to give away ; I am not merely speaking of
such places as Liberia, or Albania, or Panama, or Guatemala,
whose sovereignty is practically non-existent; I am speaking of
the sovereignty of the United States, Is the United States really
sovereign? Are there not in the United States powers that are
more powerful than the people of the United States? That is
what I want to know, and therefore, since the nations, even
within themselves, have not been able to achieve their own self-
possession, how could we expect them to behave in international
affairs so as to satisfy rationalists? There must be a conflict
there, an inner conflict in the nation which is bound to produce
all kinds of trouble including hypocrisy.
PIETER GEYL: . , . our strength must be in self-confidence . . .
To represent the French Revolution as having brought to an end
a political state common to mankind for a hundred thousand
years as Professor Polanyi seems to do has to my ears a
thoroughly unhistoric sound. It was far from being so entirely
novel an event, it resulted from slow-working changes, both in
social conditions and in ways of thinking, that had gone on for
centuries and which were by no means confined to France and it
did not effect so complete a change either. The enlightened
despots had shown a lot of social dynamism before the French
Revolution, and after it there remained a lot of statism, of cling-
ing to old habits, of respect for tradition, of distrust towards
reforming rationalism. The sharp dividing line which Polanyi
draws between England and France, or even between England
and the Continent, is to my mind equally unjustifiable. He re-
marks that continental Marxists kept on discussing the curious
backwardness of British and American politics. But just look at
continental socialists long before this beneficent change that
Polanyi sees in the fifties. Socialism there could not be simply
76
Criticism and Discussion
equated with Marxism, in France I mention Jaures, a truly
democratic idealist, only remember Ms action in the Dreyfus
case, and as for Holland but let me first quote what Polanyi
says about the doctrine in which France,, according to him, led
the world (except the Anglo-Saxon countries). s If society is not a
divine institution, it is made by man and man is free to do with
society as he likes/ Now this is a doctrine that was rejected by a
large majority of Dutch public opinion all through the nine-
teenth century, There were to begin with the parties based on
positive Christian creeds^ the orthodox Protestants and the
Catholics the present Dutch Government, by the way, mainly
rests on those two but also Thorbecke the great liberal re-
former, the author of the Constitution of 1848, admitted exclu-
sively and emphatically the restraints imposed by history, The
Dutch Socialist Party altered its programme in 1937 already, in a
non-Marxist sense, so much so that I, just back in my own
country, after twenty-two years stay in England, seriously
thought of joining it. When I did join it, immediately after the
Liberation of Holland in May 1945, 1 explained my decision by
describing the party as the last refuge for a Liberal. As for the
change of temper and mentality in the Communist world as a
result of the debunking of Stalin and of the Hungarian rebellion,
I am not sure that Professor Polanyi is not over-optimistic here,
and at any rate, when he talks of the change in the East as being
in one line with that decline of dynamic ideology in the West that
he wants us to believe took place in the last decade, I cannot
follow him. I grant him* that a reawakened national feeling had
something to do with the restoration of humane ideals in Russia,
or with the attempts in that direction, as I should prefer to put it
with the changes in Poland and Hungary. But above all, how is
it possible to argue as if before the fifties the two situations in
Russia and in Western Europe were, I should no doubt unduly
assess Professor Polanyi' s meaning if I said, identical, but even
comparable? How is it possible to write that 'we' we of the
West, Polanyi seems to mean, although perhaps I should read
*we' on both sides of the Iron Curtain that we have arrived
beyond nihilism today, and then to discuss the creative possi-
bilities by which man may discover an avenue which will not
lead back to nihilism? Lead back, as if we had ever been there.
The most sober pragmatical attitude towards public affairs, so
Professor Polanyi writes, which has spread since 1950 through
77
Criticism and Discussion
England and America., Germany and Austria, reproduces in its
repudiation of ideological strife, the attitude of Voltaire and the
Encyclopedists towards religious bigotry. I remark in passing
that Voltaire and the Encyclopedists displayed in their repudia-
tion a fervour and an animosity which was not always either
sober or pragmatical. Becker's striking phrase about the 'heav-
enly city of the eighteenth-century French philosophers 5
comes, I should think, nearer to the mark.
It is my conviction that our civilization, full of imperfections,
as it no doubt is, was, long before the fifties, and still is, the
home, par excellence, of free discussion and independent thought
and that we have lived for quite a while and still live under
the outside stress of an expansionist and dynamic ideology.
Our strength must be before all in self-confidence, which does
not mean that we must be blind to our weaknesses ; but the
moral reserves of democracy are considerable and we must not
forget that.
MICHIO TAKEYAMA: ...the overwhelming 'modern civilization
My country Japan waged a war that lasted for fourteen
years. All the virtues stored up in the course of history were
called upon for the purposes of fighting that war, but amid
exceptional difficulties everything was corrupted in the end.
The present wave of anti- American feeling, led by the active
minority, which suddenly became violent a month ago is not an
expression of nationalism ; it is prompted by the demand for
peace. We are experiencing modern nihilism in the form of
national schizophrenia, due to over-rapid, unsystematic mod-
ernization of society. People have lost their roots. Moderniza-
tion began with the slogan 'The Japanese soul, with European
technique'. But modernization has sapped the traditional
Japanese qualities.
When we consider what is now happening in China, we can
say, all the same, that Japan has managed to absorb the over-
whelming modern civilization without losing too much of its
own nature. To us Japanese it seems as though other Asian and
African countries were trying to do at one fell swoop what
we took a hundred years to do. One must hope that other
countries will gain what we have gained without losing what we
have lost. Japan gained its independence and made its ascent in
78
Criticism
a period of the most barefaced imperialism ; whereas nowadays
the highly-developed countries are helping the others. Europe
and are ready to the Asian and African countries.
That is noble, I would like to make sure, as well,
those countries will develop systematically from the spiritual
point of view too, looking at the whole problem not only from
the angle of historical ideas, but from the psychological angle as
wel. Psychology plays a very important part in a country during
periods of transition. To take an example, propaganda from the
niMlistic-radical side is always up-to-date and psychologically
captivating; whereas the propaganda from the side of reason is
always outdated and unpsychological.
THEODOR LITT: . . . no country has more important reasons . . .
What I observed in Germany in the critical years is that so-
called irrationalism and rationalism went contrary to their own
programme and formed the most amazing alliances. To go back
to the days of National Socialism, we saw a characteristic ex-
ample of the peculiar mixture of these elements among National
Socialist youth and students. On the one hand, Mr. Polanyi is
certainly right when, among the forerunners of National
Socialism, he attributes an important place to Romanticism.
There is no doubt that these young people believed that, in some
romantic way, in and through them, the best of Germany's past
would come to life again. I remember that at the time one of the
Nazi leaders published an article entitled 'Back to the primeval
forest'. A critic of the Nazis once said that these young men were
behaving like cave-men and one of the Nazi spokesmen took
this up enthusiastically and said * Yes, the primeval forest of the
cave-man is coming to life in us. We are reawakening man's
primitive instincts. We are there to bring instinct into its own as
against degenerate intellectualism.' But when it was a matter of
transferring this primitive instinct to political life, then aE at
once it became rationalism of the purest vintage. And they were
convinced that these original impulses could be led to decisive
victory in the context of a rationalistic social order, without ever
pausing to wonder whether by contact with these rationalistic
principles the original instincts would not be to some extent dis-
torted or even lost.
On the other hand, I have been long enough in the East zone
79
Criticism and Discussion
to have seen the early beginnings of Communism there and to
have observed that the spokesmen on the German side, whose
desire it was gradually to bring mankind to a state of perfection,
were convinced that once one had embarked on the Communist
way of life and adopted the Communist economy it was abso-
lutely certain to lead to a classless society and bring back Para-
dise on earth. But when one examined the basic motives of these
men, it was simply an innate belief in what was given out as
scientific fact. It is quite true that Communism owes its success
to the fact that on the one hand it claims to be based on scientific
premises and on the other it is capable of arousing fanatical
enthusiasm in the breasts of those who wish to make it a reality.
And so once again we have a combination of rational argument
and irrational faith which make up the essential strength of
Communism. Of course, when we Germans of today look at the
situation as a whole and compare our experience, in the East
zone at least, of both kinds of totalitarian systems, we naturally
wonder what present-day Germany has learnt from this experi-
ence and whether it is desirous or capable of building a new
social order. It is my impression -that two widely-held beliefs
stand in the way of a truly democratic society. There are those
who would have us believe that, as regards freedom, the differ-
ence between the Soviet-occupied zone and the Federal Repub-
lic is only one of degree. They say that in fact freedom is re-
stricted in both places in different ways and that careful scrutiny
would show that in the West too people are cheated of their
freedom by various means, such as the press and the radio, just
as they are in the East by the police and propaganda. But that
means that people fail to realize that our democracy has at least
the overriding advantage of allowing free expression of opinion,
even if it is sometimes wrong. Among the opponents of our
Western democracy there are indeed many who do not reflect
for one instant that they themselves enjoy the privilege of being
able to speak up as loud as they like without fearing any unfor-
tunate consequences. I do not think that people realize enough
that freedom and democracy are still at home with us in the
West. Then there are the others and this is a most dangerous
attitude which I have heard exists also in other Western coun-
tries there are the others who ask what is the point of making
all this fuss about freedom. We have it already and we take it
for granted.
80
Criticism and Discussion
Totalitarian systems such as Communism take a detenninist
view of history. They are convinced that progress will bring the
world inevitably to the final goal of classless society. If we think
of the extensive influence that the determinist concept of science
has on the whole of our existence and of the certainty with which
people claim that everything in our spiritual life, in society,
government and history is determined as precisely as the pro-
cesses of what we call nature, then we realize how rightly Mr.
Polanyi, in his essay on the two cultures, points out that as long
as the scientific concept of man is as widespread as it still is with
us and clearly is on the other side, the individual will not awaken
to Ms responsibilities in relation to history and to his social
environment. I must also agree with Mr. Polanyi when he points
out the need to mobilize moral forces in the defence of demo-
cratic freedom. Speaking from my own experience in Germany,
I would say that no country has more important reasons than
Germany to impress on the minds of the rising generation how
important a free democratic regime is in the general pattern of
human life. As Germans we have an educational task to
accomplish of which nobody can relieve us and in which we are
sincerely grateful for all the help other countries can give us.
81
PART II
Prospects for a New Civility
A Rehabilitation of Nationalism?
HERBERT LUTHY
NATIONALISM belongs to those political concepts which
are at once impractical and indispensable. All dis-
cussions on nationalism in general are marked by the
proliferous and glittering sterility characteristic of discussions of
undefined and indefinable subjects, such as those on the spiritual
archetypes as defined in C. G. Jung's psychology, both un-
limited in numbers and indescribable in essentials, but the
muffled existence of which, in the unconscious appears to be
evident. This comparison is not arbitrary, for we, also, are deal-
ing with the shadowy realm of collective psychology, which
eludes rational consciousness. Every attempted definition of 'the
nation', 'the nationalist idea' or 'national feeling' ends in
mysticism or mystification ; it can only be expressed in images
and symbols flags, myths, totem animals, folklore, cults, rites
representing a sense of belonging to one collective body of
individuals essentially different from individuals of any other
collective body which is rationally inexpressible. From the
nationalist point of view the nation is the embodiment of a
higher order 'directly linked with God', with its own soul, will,
consciousness and mission, and of which the essence is incom-
prehensible to all other peoples, or, also, in psychological inver-
sion, one's own nation is the 'universal' or 'humanity's nation',
all other peoples being barbarians or sub-human, i.e. the
anomaly sets itself up as the sole norm. (With certain typical
differences this was the pattern of both French and German
nationalism, and one would not have to dig very deeply to find
similar claims in other forms of nationalism.) Nationalism is not
a generic term ; we may analyse one form of nationalism in a]!
its conscious concepts and manifestations and yet not learn the
least thing about other kinds of nationalism, all and each of
which claim to be radically different from all others, and unique.
85
If we to a generally valid definition of
nationalism, we are left but a of negations :
the of universalism, the equality, and of
the human ratio.
It appeals conceptually, nationalism can only stand for
the more or less complete and exclusive adherence to one nation*
Historically, however and particularly in contemporary his-
tory the process is the reverse ; nationalism creates the nation.
A traditionally constituted population group only becomes a
nation when it is converted to nationalism. This, reduced to its
barest statement, is a well-known fact. The many fruitless
attempts made during the past 150 years to find general and
objective evidence of what could be described as forming a
nation language, culture, customs., traditions, history (i.e. con-
scious concepts) or else biological and territorial unity (i.e.
blood and soil)- have in the end invariably led to the final
definition that a nation came into being through its national
consciousness, i.e. not by way of any particular ascertainable
quality, but through a claim which in the final resort rests on an
irrational basis. The fact that in the nineteenth century the term
s nation* was applied only to certain European peoples was
founded on a historical postulate only these peoples had a
history of their own and national consciousness could only arise
on the basis of such a history ; the rest of the world's population
were 'without history' and therefore 'without consciousness'.
In the dawn of European nationalism, when those nations that
belonged to the German and Italian cultures, following the
example of the older national states of Western Europe also
formed themselves into national states, and others, like Greece,
Hungary, Poland, which had never gone under completely, were
fighting for their independence, the name of 'nation' was like a
title of ennoblement belonging to certain privileged peoples, who
possessed their own literature, traditions and history, and it then
seemed unthinkable that national consciousness could develop
everywhere, ad libitum. Today, this concept of 'peoples without
a history 9 , incapable of developing any national consciousness,
has collapsed ; all human groups have a history and if some of
them were unaware of the fact, European colonists gave them a
practical demonstration of it. The history of the Congo is at least
as old and varied as that of Belgium, although the Congo started
to produce nationalists and historians at a later date. (Every
86
A of Nationalism?
nationalist is a historian, even if he be only an historical story-
teller, retelling of a golden past.) We can record the
4 democratization" of the concept of nationalism ('Nationalism
for eveiyman") during more a century, via Eastern Europe
and the Balkans to the Near East, to Asia and Africa, just as,
from the sociological point of view, we can record the democra-
tization of the aristocratic forms of address 6 Sir * and c Madam * ;
it is just as natural that today the inhabitants of the Congo terri-
tories should wish to be addressed as a nation as that they
should desire individually to be addressed as Monsieur or
Madame, and this is not so much the expression of 'otherness*
as a claim to equality. The triumph of nationalism is at one and
the same time the triumph of a formula and the final exhaustion
of a concept, and because today this concept, 'a nation \ has lost
al distinctive meaning, we can just as easily declare at the
breakfast-table that the heyday of nationalism is over, and at
supper-time, that the unremitting advance of nationalism is the
hall-mark of our period ; both these statements can be supported
by extensive dossiers and weighty arguments. Is the form of
address, s Monsieur' or 'Madame', towards porters and washer-
women a triumph of the aristocratic principle or a sign of its
collapse? I do not ask this question jokingly, and I would take
great care not to answer it lightheartedly.
During the past century we have become so familiar with the
problems involved in this 'nationalism for everyone' that it is
superfluous to dwell on them in greater detail The perfect
nation, comprising the unity of a territory with natural frontiers,
language, religion, customs, culture, economic and political
viability and social homogeneity, exists nowhere and has never
existed, although the nations of Western Europe came relatively
close to this ideal picture the nations of a privileged part of the
world in which, during a thousand years, no major invasions or
migrations disrupted or intermingled their various peoples, in
whose more or less homogeneous societies the idea of the
"perfect nation' could in consequence arise. Everywhere else
as was already evident in Central Europe nationalism was
compelled to master certain offshoots of the national character
on which to build its claims to national independence ; either a
linguistic group, a separate religious tradition, a folklorist pecu-
liarity, or some other special status, even a sociological anti-
pathy towards neighbouring groups, were sufficient as a basis on
87
which to a nationalistic movement. But In order to become
a sovereign a thus constituted was obliged subse-
quently to acquire what It still lacked, namely the characteristics
of the perfect nation its own particular culture and past tradi-
tion, if not Its own (such as the resuscitation of half-
or forgotten or else the artificial construc-
tion of into forms of literary language); its 'natural'
territory or such as could from the military or economic points
of view self-supporting, and last, but not least, the
psychological unity der by means of
which the and myths could become effective,
and in for nationalism blindly outraged
all the provided by geography, world economics,
reason, history, and co-existence, The tragedy of Eastern
us the law of reproduction by means of which
like infusoria, propagate themselves by splitting,
and the law of the multiplication of the problem of
minorities, due to the multiplication of national states, only to
be ia the end by deportation, which did not first
in European history at the end of the second World
War, but after the dissolution of the Turkish Empire, A dozen
nationalist movements arose against Austria -Hungary, as many
against Turkey, as many against the Russian state ; then, follow-
ing victory or coUapse, Croat nationalism against the new
Great Serbia, Slovak against Czechoslovakia, Ukrainian against
Poland, Transylvanian and Bessarabian against greater Ron-
mania, Macedonian against all the established national states of
the Balkans^ always with the constant backing of those Great
Powers interested in the mobilization of a fifth column; the
naive or cynical zeal with which aU the warring powers in the
First World War supported every nationalistic or irredentist
movement in the enemy's camp was the prelude to the catas-
trophes that occurred between the two wars.
In one and the same comer of the world today the various
nationalist movements sprawl over and through one another
and demand, as an expression of their rival claims to power and
leadership, the loyalty and enthusiasm of the same populations.
We have long been familiar with Arab nationalism, but also
with the Egyptian, Iraqi, Druse and Kurd varieties. African
nationalism is an undeniable fact, but so also are the Cameroon
and the Bamileke, the Ghanaian and the Ashanti, the Congolese
88
A Rehabilitation of Nationalism?
and the Lumumba, each of which also bears within itself both,
the possibility of inner fragmentation and of great-power imper-
ialism. Indian nationalism is established but has to assert itself
over two hundred potential nationalisms ; the Pakistani has to
make itself independent in the face of the Indian, but the
Bengalis are still uncertain whether their nationalism is Pakistan
or Bengali, and in North Baluchistan Pushtu nationalism is
demanding its own Pushtunistan, This list could easily be
lengthened ; there is no criterion of international law or political
philosophy which can prevent any piece of the human mosaic,
any sheikhdom on the pirate coasts, any African tribe or clan,
any administrative district, once artificially cut from the map
by a colonial power, from declaring itself a nation when circum-
stances and the external balance of power are favourable.
This is no cheap satire on the condition of peoples who, as the
result of the decline of empires or the instability of artificially
created states, were left without genuine moral or political
affiliations. But it is sufficient reason at last to strip the process
of nationalization of all romance and mysticism, and to investi-
gate its real functions. A nation does not arise from the instinc-
tive action of a native soul, nor through the free decision of the
collective will. We know today that nationalism, i.e. the found-
ing of a nation, postulates nothing else but the existence of a
group that can in some way be enclosed within definite frontiers,
in whose name a leadership magnates, knezes, chiefs, priests,
teachers, propagandists, cheer-leaders, a native intelligentsia,
or a local dynasty can claim the right of self-determination,
i.e. the right to rule over it themselves. Frontiers in this sense
may be organizational, administrative, or even merely propa-
gandist ; the common link a family or tribal basis, or else a com-
munity united by religion, language, or no more than tradition,
a Mafia, or, simply, as in the new African states, an artificial
administrative unit imposed by foreign rule a few decades
earlier. Where such structural elements exist, there also exists a
corresponding local leadership, based either on a feudal or
religious ruling caste or a native intelligentsia. We tend today
to assume that in the development of national revolutionary
movements the chief role is assignable to the intelligentsia or
semi-intelligentsia, which always and everywhere claims the
natural right to governmental and administrative posts, and sees
in every aspect of 'non-national* administration both material
89
Herbert Luthy
disadvantages and a personal offence to its racial consciousness.
But in Africa today 5 as in Eastern Europe yesterday, older tradi-
tions and also dynastic claims are involved; Sekou Toure,
descendant of a race of Sudanese conquerors, and Modibo
Keita, heir to the medieval Mali dynasty, have returned, via
the Quartier Latin, to claim their ancient rights. No section of
humanity is without traditions and historically founded claims
on which some form of nationalism can be erected ; the unfor-
tunate fact is, rather, that the soil of every continent is soaked
in historically based titles and claims. Nothing is more ridic-
ulous than to challenge the historical validity of a nationalist
movement that has begun to develop, as, for instance, the
French have done over Algeria; nationalism, like physical
movement, proves its reality by marching on, and even when
there had previously been nothing in existence resembling a
national consciousness, agitation and struggle can in no time
create a tradition and a consciousness and a legitimate claim
based on them for there is no other criterion.
So long as history has existed this process has repeated itself
again and again ; it is one half of the history of states, of which
the other half is the formation of empires. All that is new is the
name we have ascribed to it and the ideology that we have attri-
buted to it, namely, "Nationalism 5 . When, at the end of the
thirteenth century, the members of the lesser nobility and the
ringleaders of some Swiss Alpine valleys banded themselves
together against Habsburg domination, the sole political claim
they laid down in their charter was 'We do not want any foreign
judges'. This meant that they desired themselves to exercise the
basic function of rulership, the administration of the law, and
this claim had the backing of the mountain peasants. It was not
a matter of demanding a superior or a better jurisdiction, but
their own; not for an improved administration but for self-
administration. They preferred even unjust but native judges,
acting in conformity with their ancient customs and delivered in
the local dialect, to the learned judgements of the Roman law
schools delivered by foreign prefects. The basic claim of national-
ism is nothing but the basic claim of medieval particularism.
When today we refer to the nationalism of the Cameroons
or Togoland, we could just as well re-write the history books
and be referring to Waldstattian, Appenzellian, Waldausian,
Friesian, Albigensian or Novgorodian nationalism. The desire
90
A of Nalionalfsm?
to live according to one's own and customs to
be ruled by one's fellow-countrymen is the natural desire
of every population group that has developed its own customs
and standards of behaviour; the rest is a matter of circum-
stances, of historical luck, of greater or lesser originality
and stubbornness. In the stronghold of the Swiss Alps and
Lower Alps, in a comer of Europe where the power politics of
the great states were in balance, the medieval particularism to
which the concept and ideology of the nation were alien, was
able to maintain itself down to modern times ; in the greater part
of the rest of Europe it was stamped out by the development of
absolutist territorial states. It was precisely the chief historical
feature of the great nations of Western Europe that as they
passed through the melting-pot of absolutism, i.e. the centrally
administered state, they were welded out of dozens of particular
groups into uniform masses of subjects and these, during the
social and political revolutions at the turn of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, became nations in the modem sense of
the term. For the very reason that they had not developed spon-
taneously, but were synthetic creations, they needed or rather,
the new leadership that had taken over the dynastic apparatus
of government needed a nationalist ideology to support them.
The concept of the nation, which was equally unnecessary to
medieval communal autonomism and to medieval overlord-
ship, belongs historically to the period of transformation at the
beginning of the ii .ustrial age ; it was born simultaneously with
the twin concept of democracy. The decisive moment occurred
with the changeover of the principle of legitimization ; when
government was no longer carried on in the name of a legitimate
rulership but in the name of the people (be it the entire popula-
tion of the state or its politically active representatives) the
population had to be conceived as a political unity. Nationalism
was the ideological integrator of the democratic state. An indi-
vidualistic democracy, such as was dreamed of by the rationalist
political philosophers of the eighteenth century, cannot provide
a practical form of government, but merely that anarchistic form
of Utopia which heads the beginning of every revolutionary
movement. (The formula 'Government of the people, for the
people, and by the people' postulates the identity of people and
state, i.e. the abolition of the state as a separate institution, in
the same way as does Marxist theory.) Rousseau, although very
G 91
Herbert Luthy
much against his wish, knew this to be the case, because he
knew the endless civic strifes of the citizens of his native
Geneva. Rousseau's entire works are a protest of Genevese-
Calvinist reaction against the corrupting penetration of
'frivolous French civilization' a corrupt local oligarchy sup-
ported by France, the introduction of French theatrical com-
panies enforced on Geneva by diplomatic and military coercion
and his reaction was so strong precisely because he himself
was a strayed sheep who never found his way back to the fold.
A community of subjects requires no national loyalties and an
army no patriotic enthusiasm, but a democracy needs a
nationalistic ideology for the integration of its citizens and its
citizen armies ; the French Revolution became nationalistic at
the moment when it became terroristic. The nationalism of the
nineteenth century was no longer instinctively inborn, but a
deliberately fostered ideology of unity. Since the French Revolu-
tion all democratic constitutions elaborated a mass of rites and
institutions for the training of national feelings presentation of
colours, civic oaths, national holidays, re-writing of history,
folklore, the entire apparatus of education and cultural adminis-
tration was drawn into the service of national consciousness.
Nationalism is basically a terroristic ideology that imposes,
conformity of thought and behaviour on the members of those
population groups it has either seized or claimed. Enmity, sus-
picion, or prejudice towards other national groups or unassi-
milated minorities are front-line weapons in the service of
nationalist integration. Helvetius said that in a nation of hunch-
backs it is a citizen's duty to wear the national hump, i.e. to
think, feel and react in conformity to the national basis ; nothing
is more typical of this kind of ideology than expressions such as
'un-German', 'un-American', etc., which brand the failure to
wear the national hump as monstrous or even delinquent be-
haviour. Autonomism, individualism, or cosmopolitanism, any
form of non-nationalistic, pre-nationalistic or super-national-
istic loyalties is regarded in the last resort as criminal. For over a
century the cherishing of the nationalist hump and the attempt
to condition in the Pavlov manner nationalistic behaviour
patterns was the supreme educational aim of school-teaching
and the re-writing of history from the patriotic point of view,
and with enormous success. Wherever nationalistic ideologies
hold power, witch-hunting can at any moment break out; in
92
A Rehabilitation of Nationalism?
times of crisis or war every form of nonconformity becomes
high treason, and in this century the citizens of aH European
nations have experienced how effectively this mental terrorism
can exclude or defame any form of rational thought,
As nationalism is, according to definition, a national attitude,
it is difficult to agree on how it should be defined, and this might
lead to a misunderstanding in our discussion owing to the differ-
ent shades of linguistic meaning between the Continental and
the English uses of the term. I fear that I may here be speaking
of an entirely different concept from Professor Polanyi's, The
advantages of that political good sense he attributes to the
English nation, in my opinion, include the fact that they do not
know what 'nationalism* ('Nationalisms') is. As far as I am
aware, the term 'nationalism' is generally used in English as a
synonym for patriotism or love of one's own homeland, and
everything that is a matter of public property or public concern
is called ' national'; the mystical terminology of nationalism
(' Nationalisms ') is foreign to a language which refers to 'this
country 9 or 'Her Majesty's Government' whilst elsewhere oaths
of allegiance are taken to the fatherland or the nation. The gulli-
bility with regard to such phenomena as national socialism or
Arab nationalism which for a long time prevailed in England
was largely due to this ignorance of pathological nationalism.
I would like to ascribe this very sympathetic but sometimes
dangerous unawareness of certain diseases, as is the case with so
many other English advantages, to English insularity. I know
how silly such distinctions of 'national minds' generally are ; but
this is a question of language and the meaning of political lang-
uage in every country is the outcome of that country's particular
historical experience and tradition, which makes it more difficult
to translate and more subject to becoming absurd in literal
translation, than any other. The English were favoured insofar
as they were able to become a nation (or to achieve nationhood)
without too ardent struggles towards that end, and without hav-
ing become a problem to themselves in the process of defining
'uniqueness'. Since 1066 the unity of the English kingdom has
never been challenged from within or without; there were epic
struggles for succession rights and forms of government but not
over the unity of succession and government. No Armada since
1066 ever reached the English coast; and even the unification of
the British Isles was eventually accomplished as an 'internal
93
Herbert Luthy
affair 9 , without more effective foreign intervention than some
Important French intrigues in Scotland and Ireland. If the
French Revolution had taken place in as similarly privileged
circumstances as the English civil war of the seventeenth century
and the long subsequent dynastic troubles, and if It had been
allowed to develop equally undisturbed by exterior Influences,, it
too might have been spared the transformation Into a form of
terroristic nationalism. The English citizen, Insofar as he did not
belong to the aristocracy, was sufficiently protected against
foreign influence by the mere insularity of Ms country, without
the necessity for an Ideology of nationalistic Integration. Until
recent times Britain could feel herself sufficiently protected by
her fleet to dispense with conscription and any form of militarism
along Continental lines, this most compulsory form of "Integra-
tion of the souls' ; the English are the only people in the world
who even today still proudly refer to themselves as subjects, for
to be a British subject meant always the contrary of being tied to
the soil an unparalleled liberty of movement over seas and
continents and was a greater privilege than to be a state
citizen of any republic.
To be sure, England has developed aspects of nationalism and
Imperialism just as repulsive as those revealed by any Continen-
tal nation, but without posing similar problems ; her nationalism
remained a form of arrogant insularity and her imperialism
was a struggle of a nation of traders and seafarers for the free-
dom of the seas their freedom to trade, sail and settle every-
where not for frontier provinces and frontier populations.
During centuries England strove to solve her own nationality
problem, the Irish, by every means of suppression, even to
genocide, by methods comparable to the very worst Continental
examples, but even this remained an internal affair. The history
of Ireland is as tragic as that of Poland, but in contrast to Poland
Ireland had no other neighbour but England, which lay like a
mighty barrier between that small island and Europe ; no other
Power was able to employ this potential fifth column, no 'world
conscience' built up a literature of accusation against the
'enslavers of Eire*, no European Lord Byron sang of the sor-
rows of Ireland; England did not solve her Irish problem any
more successfully than France her Algerian, but Ireland never
succeeded in becoming a painful spot in world politics. It is not a
denigration of these English virtues of 'suspended logic 9 if I
94
A of Nationalism?
believe they rest to a great degree on an of
hopelessly entangled problems and an equally enviable good
conscience.
That is probably the reason why the English example, "often
imitated but never attained 9 , has remained so sterile, in spite of
ail the willingness to learn from it on the part of Continental
Europeans ; the English constitution is as inimitable as English
history itself. Nowhere outside England was 'national unity 5 a
natural condition, to be regarded as a matter of course ; every-
where else the ideology of nationalistic integration was indis-
pensable to the foundation of the nation. Some loose form of
conditional loyalty is insufficient to hold together a political
community that is not merely a collection of subjects; this
requires a certain degree of automatic, unconditional loyalty,
and where this cannot be postulated in advance, it must be
drilled in. When the New England colonies seceded from Eng-
land their leaders did not concern themselves with the question
as to whether their claim to independence was legitimized by
their being a nation of their own; their practical, technical
motives for rebellion against the legislation of a distant Parlia-
ment, that regarded their particular needs and aspirations as of
secondary importance, seemed to them amply sufficient for the
purpose.
The term 'nationalism 3 is as inadequate to describe the
revolt of the thirteen colonies as it is to describe the revolt of the
free Swiss valleys or that of the Mau Man, American national-
ism was subsequently developed, in part very deliberately, as an
ideology of integration, as a negation of all those nationalities
that went into the 'melting-pot 5 . But similarly to its English
counterpart, free of external problems, this political and rational
form of nationalism the absorption, individually, of displaced
persons into a new community, replacing all the national back-
grounds from which they originated is inimitable and untrans-
mittable ; the same process has never been repeated elsewhere.
The assumption that nationalism and democracy are insepar-
ableand even practically identical became a basic tenet of
American political thought (e.g. Professor W. MacDougalFs
The American Nation). With Wilson this tenet became a matter
of world history, and the least one can say is that it has not
helped to make the world safe for democracy. Anglo-Saxon
theorists never seemed to grasp the fact that in the old world
95
Herbert Luthy
nationalism was the extreme example of the destructive effect of
* secularized religiosity' and of 'powerful moral passion 5 that
had been led astray, or, if they did so, regarded this merely as the
result of occasional and therefore abnormal excesses.
Above all the most deeprooted characteristic of nationalism
in settled populations living side by side or sometimes even inter-
mingled with one another, which caused not only Marxists but
also liberals of the classical school invariably to repudiate
nationalism as a reactionary ideology, remained completely
alien to both English and American experience; this charac-
teristic was the mobilization of the atavistic instincts of an autar-
kical agrarian society against the 'uprooting 5 and 'social disin-
tegration' inseparable from modern industrial society. To the
same degree as industrialization and world economics dissolved
the former links with clan and soil, ancestry, totem animals, the
native ground, 'blood and soil', ancestor worship, xenophobia
and endogamy became the ideological postulates of nationalism,
taught with religious zeal. And in fact nationalism did often
serve as an ideological bulwark against revolutionary tendencies,
against those of a democratic character in the nineteenth
century and against Communistic advances in the twenti-
eth (the nationality principle against world revolution, Ver-
sailles against Bolshevism, Wilson against Lenin). This bulwark
was illusory, and the Bolshevik politicians soon discovered
that in almost every part of the world nationalism could in fact
be utilized far more effectively as dynamite than as cement:
nationalism as an atavistic defence mechanism against the
social transformations of modern times which basically
are a defeudalization of humanity turns for that reason first
against the industrial powers of the West, because it was they
who had entrapped all other countries into the net of world
economy, and because, in the name of free enterprise, they
neglected for too long the social consequences of this process
(in their own countries as well as in the rest of the world), whilst
Communism offered a universal recipe for social reintegration.
The attempt of the Western world, made for the first time in
Eastern Europe and other border countries of Russia after 1918,
to whip up their nationalist ideologies against the revolution,
was an admission that they possessed no organizational prin-
ciples appropriate to the industrial age, and that they were
attempting to exorcize the problems of the present by means of
96
A Rehabilitation of Nationalism?
the fetishes of the past ; this, in spite of occasional tactical suc-
cesses was a rearguard battle lost in advance. Today the
Western world is beginning slowly and unwillingly to feel its
way towards both pluralistic and supra-national forms of
organization. There is as yet no indication of a definite success in
this direction, yet it is my firm conviction that no other method
has any future, and that retreat would be catastrophic.
In recent years Titoism, the East German rising of 1953, the
Hungarian and Polish revolutions of 1956, the Tibetan rising
and similar events have led to a kind of rehabilitation of
nationalism in Western thought. This is in the first instance
merely an expression of relief at the fact that the Soviet system
is also having trouble with nationalistic reactions, and of the
understandable sympathy with every form of resistance to an
equally brutal and deceitful despotism. Yet I nevertheless con-
sider it important that we should not develop a double-minded-
ness with regard to a pathological phenomenon which, when it
appears in the West, we regard as a plague, but of which, when
it breaks out in the Communist Empire, we approve simply
because it causes disquiet to the Communist rulers behind the
Iron Curtain. If we were technicians and tacticians of the Cold
War, for whom on the model of Machiavellism in any given
period everything that is damaging to one's opponents is justi-
fiable, we might also include nationalistic ideology among our
intellectual weapons, but in that case we would do well to do so
with the same degree of cold cynicism with which Communistic
propaganda includes nationalism in its own strategy ; regarding
it as a factor in collective psychology which one must take into
account and which can be used as a destructive force against the
enemy, but which must be rejected as a means of any construc-
tive policy.
It is indisputable and basically inevitable that the disturbances
in the satellite states included a strong nationalistic element.
No collective resistance to a strongly grounded overlordship
could dispense with an organizational basis, a frame and a
symbol of unity. In the Asian, African (and one hundred
and fifty years ago, American) colonial territories, the struggle
for independence was at first inevitably organized within this
colonial framework, even when the latter was a completely arti-
ficial and arbitrary creation (and it is clear that in Africa, at least,
this is merely a preliminary phase, which must be followed by
97
regional federations or territorial re-organizations of the
Continent if Africa is not to become 'balkanized* in its turn).
In the same way the resistance against the centralized rule in the
Soviet Empire finds its natural support in the formerly inde-
pendent states, which continue to exist as political, administra-
tive and even economic units and which, in their national
sections of the ruling party, even possess a certain degree of
formal autonomy. Beyond all nationalistic mythology there are
purely practical and mechanical reasons why tendencies towards
the loosening and differentiation of the Communist bloc must
ran along such lines, and it is equally obvious that in these cases
many historical memories and symbols of earlier struggles for
independence should be re-awakened. But these former symbols
and memories are also present in our own minds, and we have
fallen into the fatal habit of classing every struggle for self-
government and autonomy as a nationalist movement, without
troubling to investigate its basic motives and claims.
I do not in the least dispute the strength or justification of
specifically national effects, or of those rooted in national tradi-
tions (the fact, for example, that Poland and Hungary are the
two Catholic provinces of Eastern Europe, whose religious
tradition for nearly a thousand years was almost Identical with
their national one, which, among other reasons, caused them to
remain immune to the Influences of Great Russian, Pan-Slavic
and Greek Orthodox propaganda, although it is debatable
whether 'national 9 is an adequate description of such com-
plex historical facts). But the demand for autonomy by cultural,
religious, or even simply regional communities, for Individual
freedom of thought and behaviour permitting Individuals as well
as historical and social groups to breathe and develop freely,
is not in essence nationalistic. The demand of Hungarian work-
ers to have the right to form free trade unions or the struggle of
Hungarian peasants against collectivization, do not seem to me
to require any additional legitimlzation on the grounds of nat-
ional traditions going back to the Hungarian feudal state
which knew neither trade unions nor free peasants; and the
demand of Hungarian writers for the right to 'write the truth'
would only diminish if it were made in the name of a speci-
fically Hungarian truth or national * otherness'. The demand for
human rights and human dignity which also includes the right
to individualism and autonomy of the social groups which make
98
A Rehabilitation of Nationalism?
up the human mosaic Is not a national right and needs BO
nationalistic justification. No doubt we have to reckon with
present day linguistics, which define any autonomist movement
as nationalism, but in that case we must also draw the conse-
quences of such a misuse of the term. 'Nationalism for every-
one' cannot be regarded as synonymous with the traditional
conception of the nation as the highest form of human integra-
tion, of s national sovereignty' as the highest organizational
form of human relationships, nor with an international order
which would be exclusively a system of relationships between
sovereign national states, for in this case 'nationalism for every-
one' would mean the return of humanity to tribalism and the
prehistoric horde. Europe not only provided the world with the
concept of the nation, but also with the concept of balkaniza-
tion. The path to progress beyond the universal totalitarian
state and beyond nihilism cannot be sought in a return to
balkanization.
99
Revolutionary Nationalism
ALBERT HOURANI
IF most communities in the modern world have followed the
path of the French Revolution rather than English reform,
that is not because they preferred the doctrines of Rousseau
to those of Locke on Intellectual or aesthetic grounds, but
because the experience of France has been more relevant to their
problems than that of England ; and it was the gravity of these
problems, rather than the influence of Dostoievsky, which
pushed some of them to the logical extreme of nihilism, while
others managed to achieve the 6 suspended logic' of England and
America. Faced with certain problems, all traditional institu-
tions and all habits of compromise, however deeply rooted,
break down. In what follows I shall try to describe some of the
factors which pushed the peoples of the world along the path of
revolutionary secular nationalism ; my examples will be drawn
from one group of peoples, those which formerly belonged to
the Ottoman Empire, but what I say may be, in some measure,
relevant to others as well.
That they belonged to the Ottoman Empire is indeed the first
thing which should seize our attention. When the modern civili-
zation of Europe first presented itself to the peoples of the
world, it found most of them in the throes of one of the great
natural movements of history, and indeed the influence of
Europe was first felt as something inserted into that movement
and complicating it rather than as an independent factor. This
movement was that of the disintegration of great empires
Turkish and Persian, Mogul and Chinese. All these were cen-
turies old, and were undergoing that process by which the
effort of will which creates an Empire relaxes, and the 'charm'
which holds it together begins to fade. The dissolution of a great,
ancient and complex political system brings with it not adminis-
trative and economic strain alone but moral strain also. Empires
101
Revolutionary Nationalism
establish themselves in the heart ; to survive four hundred years
they cannot rest on force alone but must win themselves a gen-
eral acquiescence and some active loyalty. So it was with the
Ottoman Empire. It was not in its great days simply an auto-
cracy holding down unwilling peoples. That is what it became
at the very end, but its becoming so was itself a sign of its decline
and imminent collapse. In its great days Ottoman rule had been
deeply rooted in its subjects* minds. For the Moslem element
(whether Turk or not) the Sultan was the greatest ruler of Sunni
Islam, the defender of the frontier against Christian Europe and
Shi'i Persia and guardian of the holy cities ; between Mm and
them ran the link of the Law, recognized by both as sovereign
in the Empire and standing above the ruler's will. The non-
Moslem subjects did not look at the Sultan's rule In this way,
but they too acquiesced because of economic interest, because
of their recognized status as separate communities managing
their own affairs under their own lords, or because of that
' charm* which power exercises as long as it is not challenged and
while it has not lost its nerve.
When Empires disintegrate they do so in two ways : first geo-
graphically, by the escape of regions and peoples from central
control into autonomy and independence ; secondly, by way of
moral dissolution, the relaxation of the bond of trust between
government and ruled. The Ottoman Government failed to give
its subjects just and efficient rule springing from some principle
they could accept, and they in their turn one section after
another ceased to give it the active loyalty and participation
which governments require, in the modern age more than
before. This moral collapse was one of which the Ottomans
themselves were aware, and even in the great sixteenth century,
Turkish writers were analysing the Empire's decay and asserting
that there was no remedy except a revival of the public virtues
among rulers and ruled. In the nineteenth century the Ottoman
Government made a deliberate attempt to bring about such a
revival, by creating a new political system which could once
more be the focus of loyalty and the ground of virtue. But it
failed in the end to create a morally unified 'Ottoman 5 nation,
and there were many reasons for the failure the chain-reaction
set up by the first successful revolt, that of the Greeks ; the factor
of religious difference, the desire for religious autonomy taking
the secularized form of the demand for communal indepen-
102
Albert Hourani
dence ; above all, the fact that political systems do not disinte-
grate easily, and the Empire was forced, In its last dreadful
phase, to turn its back on its own Ideal of egalitarian patriotism,
and become an autocracy simply to survive. Finally, the ruling
element Itself, the Turks, turned against the Empire as having
been more trouble than it was worth, and, in a last scene not
without Its pathos, declared that the Ottoman Sultanate had
'passed for ever Into history'.
With the weakening of the Sultan's power, and still more
when he disappeared, a new problem presented itself to all his
subjects, but particularly to those who, by education and In
other ways, had become conscious of a world beyond their tribe
or village. It was not simply the problem of making other
arrangements for their administration, for that, over a large
part of the Empire, was taken over by Britain and France. It
was something more fundamental: a problem of Identity.
'Who am I* is the first of all questions ; posed in political terms.
It could be easily answered during the great Ottoman days. *F
was a member of a religious community and a subject of the
Sultan. But now that the religious community was being sec-
ularized and the Sultan's grip had relaxed, it became a real ques-
tion. It was an urgent one, because a man's self-identification Is
the basis of his rights and duties, and the moral ground of the com-
munity ; and It was a complex one, because it was not clear and
obvious how men should think of themselves. Brought up In an
Empire where races, languages and religions had mixed together,
open to doctrines from Europe as well as their own cultures,
enclosed in a hierarchy of communities stretching outwards
from the family, through tribe, village and district, trade-guild,
town-quarter and city to the universal religious community,
they could identify themselves in more than one way; and
it was only gradually, and not without pain, that the 'nation',
defined in terms of an equivocal blend of religion and language,
emerged as the basis of political morality and organization.
The new dynamic nationalism, therefore, meant for the
peoples of the Near East and mutatis mutandis for other peoples
an attempt to rediscover themselves, to identify themselves
and so re-create their political life. It was dynamic and revolu-
tionary, because before life could be re-created it was or at
least it seemed necessary to shake oneself free from the dying
body of the Empire, and also for another reason as well. The
103
Revolutionary Nationalism
vast expansion of Western Europe, and above all of Britain
and France an expansion of goods, of armies, of ideas and
political systems was the greatest event of the nineteenth
century^ and not only in economic and political history but in
that of the human imagination. This inexorable advance, which
seemed likely to leave no corner of the world untouched, re-
vealed the existence of a strength as yet undreamed of; and it
was clear that the advance could not be resisted, nor European
control once imposed thrown off, unless a similar strength
could be generated. Thus there began that typical movement of
the period, the search for the ' secret ' of European strength ; and
it is characteristic of the difference between that age and this that
we, if we posed the question, would think first of all of heavy
industry and technology, and the scientific attitude which makes
them possible, while our fathers would have tended to ignore or
minimize the difference of material strength and lay all their
emphasis on the superior political institutions and morality of
Europe: on national unity and self-sacrifice, on the active
co-operation of go vernments and people, on representative institu-
tions as a means to both these, and behind all this on the inces-
sant energy moral, intellectual and practical alike of the
Western peoples. Thus the desire to emulate the strength of
Europe seemed to confirm the lesson of Ottoman decline : what
was needed was a revival of communal strength and virtue,
focused on the idea of the nation, and aiming in the first instance
at the overthrow of European control, by violent means if
necessary, and then at the re-creation of real political life.
The need for an identity and a community, for public virtue
and national strength, the idea of the national as the focus of
virtue and Parliamentary government as its school : these are the
forces which have led, in the last hundred years, to the partition
of the great Empires into several dozen sovereign states. But has
humanity in the end obtained what it sought? It is difficult to
draw up a judgment on a whole period of history, although
equally difficult, and in the end more dangerous, to refuse to
judge and believe that history transcends our judgment and is
indeed the norm of our morality. But if we had to draw up a
balance-sheet for the period of national struggle and independ-
ence, it might read somewhat as follows. First of all, the effort
to become independent has in fact generated a dynamic energy,
a sense of unity and a corporate self-confidence which to some
104
Albert Hourani
extent have formed the ground of political virtue : nationalism
has created a sense of active responsibility, if only for a limited
society, and that 'mutual affection of fellow-citizens' of which
Polanyi speaks. The care of a national government for its own
people, when it exists, is something different from the care of a
benevolent foreign government; and the spirit in which men
accept injustice from those they regard as belonging to them-
selves is quite different from that in which they acquiesce in the
injustice of a conqueror. But on the other hand, often the moral
unity does not go very deep. Much depends on how inde-
pendence is achieved : if too easily, the process does not produce
a real and lasting national cohesion, and if too difficult the
cohesion may be created and then broken in pieces. Much
depends too on when independence is achieved : it can come too
early or too late. Again, the State when created may not be co-
terminous with the 'nation' as nationalism defines it, and
neither may correspond to the natural community created by
geography and history. For all three to have the same extension,
there must be a combination of factors such as rarely occurs :
clear natural frontiers, one religion, one language and culture, a
historical tradition of unity. When this combination is lacking,
there is something artificial or abstract about the idea of the
'nation'. Men are defined in terms of less than their whole
selves, and the result is a lack of depth and reality in the sense of
solidarity, the break-up of historical communities, self-division,
and conflicting claims to land or to men's allegiance.
What may be more dangerous still, the struggle for inde-
pendence has often led to the exaltation of one set of virtues at
the expense of others : of those which are necessary for the
struggle unity, loyalty, self-sacrifice rather than those of the
solitary seeker after the truth, or of the kind of citizen or leader
who is more concerned to defend the individual against society
than to defend his society against another. The national ideal, as
moulded by the heroic struggle for freedom, does not always
serve as the ground of the moral qualities which are necessary
to run a democratic system in an independent State. Once inde-
pendence has been achieved, Parliamentary government may
mean a weak executive and national division ; so it is condemned
in the name of the national ideal, the complex of ideas built
around the concept of the nation tends to dissolve, and the
dynamism it has generated finds no channel through which to
105
Revolutionary Nationalism
express itself. In some countries, the resulting frustration may
express itself in the attempt to expand ; but on the other hand
prudence, the euphoria of Independence, the consciousness of
military weakness, the existence of the United Nations, the
influence of the universal principles in the name of which
Independence has been won all these may work in the opposite
direction. States, being Independent centres of decision, must
always find it difficult to live side by side, and there can never
be a complete harmony of interest between them. The process of
dividing the world into sovereign States could not have taken
place without friction, and has left behind It, now that it is
nearing completion, several million refugees; but it has left
behind it surprisingly few territorial disputes. There are only
one or two soch disputes so bitter that they may lead to a major
war ; the most dangerous of course is the dispute over Palestine.
On the whole, the frustration which comes so easily after inde-
pendence tends to show itself in moral disintegration : this
expresses itself in civil strife or in a civic Indifference which leads
in its turn to despotism.
The classical nationalism does not always therefore create a
lasting strength ; but strength albeit of a rather different sort
is even more necessary after independence than before. The new
States find themselves faced with the interests and pressure of
the Great Powers, and also with neighbours who, although no
Great Powers In the strict sense, may still be great in proportion
to them. What is more important, they are touched by new ideas
by that new ideology of economic and social development
which is taking the place of the ideology of nationalism, or else
giving it a new content. It is only through economic develop-
ment, the modern world believes, that nations can be strong and
morally united ; only a developing State can be morally heal thy and
united. So the problem is still that of strength, and of the social
and poll ticalvirtueswhichareinseparablyconnectedwithstrength.
But the type of strength which is needed, and the type of virtue
exalted, have changed in the process. If one asks what is needed
by a developing society, the answer must be complex : technical
accomplishment and the intellectual habits underlyingit ; political
consciousness, the awareness of what is being aimed at ; a special
kind of social discipline, that of the intelligent individual, con-
scious of Ms own interests but willing to accept subordination
of Ms good to that of others, and of present to future goods ;
106
Albert Hourani
flexible institutions, free from the chains of custom ; a strong
executive, able to plan, to impose its conception of change, to
intervene actively in the economic process, and to bring about
rapidly changes which otherwise might take several generations.
There are some countries, like India and Tunisia, where the
ideas of development and reform were implicit in the idea of
nationalism even before independence came, and where the
social and moral preparation for development therefore took
place at the same time as the struggle for independence. In these
fortunate countries, It may be that development will come
about and the new type of strength be generated within a Parlia-
mentary system, and it is possible to hope for that * suspended
logic', that acceptance of existing Institutions, which Polanyi
calls for. In other States, however, we must at least ask the
question, whether there is not a certain contradiction between
Polanyi's ideal State and the kind of State visited by rapid
development. The States of Asia and Africa, faced with the need
for rapid social and economic change, may well decide that only
two paths lie open to them. One is that of Communism, on the
Chinese rather than the Russian model, for the example of
China its problems and its sudden leap forward into the age of
industry and technology seems more relevant to Asia and
Africa than that of Russia, a European state in a different phase
of change. The other is that of 4 popular nationalism', with
Egypt as the most obvious example: a nationalism which
emphasizes the future rather than the past, the heroic individual
remaking the social world, the popular will embodied in a pop-
ular leader, and a territorial patriotism with the great dams and
steelworks as its totems. The dangers of this are obvious. Once
more, the dynamism generated by internal construction and
hope of better things may be diverted outwards ; and the claim
for a viable unit of development, for water, minerals or oil-
royalties, can give rise to conflicts no less than the claim for
'natural frontiers* or the incorporation of one nation in one
State. Once more, the emphasis on the future good of all may
lead to neglect of the present rights of the individual But it
seems more likely than not that, except in a few favoured coun-
tries, men will be willing to incur these dangers, and for the sake
of a real or imagined social well-being, will continue to accept
'the rationalist ideal of a secular society *, and to pour into it all
the fervour of a religion restated in secular terms.
H 107
Criticism and Discussion
HERBERT LUTHY: . . . these States have become too small . . .
I shall deal with only one aspect of the problem that Is, with
the question of whether the reawakening of national conscious-
ness in Europe is to be reckoned as one of the phenomena of
revisionism that might lead us back, beyond ideological relig-
ions, to a peaceful, tolerant and well-balanced society. There are
two sets of events that might lead us to conclude that this is so.
One of them is our unequivocal approval of the efforts made by
the former colonial peoples to achieve independence. This
involves the very difficult question of whether that movement
should be regarded as nationalistic : in point of fact we are no
longer clear as to what really constitutes nationalism, once we
get outside Europe.
In my opinion it is completely arbitrary to apply the words
4 nationalism* to every movement towards independence by a
colonial population, when we cannot even say definitely to what
extent it is related to a specific nation. There is no rule of inter-
national law, or even of political philosophy, which would
justify opposition to the efforts of the Luluas or the Balubas to
achieve their independence, or deny them the right to represent
themselves as a nation. Neither is there any rule of international
law or political philosophy under which we could dispute the
right of the Bakongo to pursue the reunification of the sections
of their people which have been divided up between the former
French Equatorial Africa, the former Belgian Congo, and Por-
tuguese Angola, in the same way that Germany aspires towards
reunification. I think it would lead us into great complications if
we were to raise the question of the definition of a nation here ;
and broadly speaking, the international vocabulary has univer-
sally adopted the custom of applying the word 'nation' to any
community that constitutes a State or wishes to constitute one
and, on the strength of that fact, applies for representation in the
109
Criticism and Discussion
United Nations. It is almost inevitable for us here in Europe to
approach a discussion of nationalism predominantly in relation
to ourselves and our own experience, for we are really the only
people who have any idea of what the term originally signified.
But to come back to the one point with which I have to deal
does the reawakening of nationalism in the Communist sphere
of influence represent a movement towards freedom, one which
has important implications for the future? We must of course
begin by dismissing the suggestion that all the totalitarian ideol-
ogies might justifiably be regarded as equal. For the notion that
nationalism, the reawakening of nationalist movements, could
ever have helped to overthrow a Fascist or Nazi form of
totalitarianism must, of course, be dismissed as absurd. Nat-
ional Socialism, Fascism, the Iron Guard were themselves
nationalist movements, out to overcome the Communist
danger : we have had that already, and had its results too.
It is a different matter, of course, in the Communist sphere of
influence, and we can all make the comparison between the
Polish and Hungarian independence movements and those of
the colonial peoples. Yesterday we listened to a number of
representatives of Hungary and Poland ; and it struck me right
away as curious that not one of them stressed, or even men-
tioned, the national aspect of their respective revolutions. The
spiritual leaders of those uprisings were concerned, not with a
specifically Hungarian or Polish social order, but with a proper
form of society. It goes without saying that the struggle had a
national flavour about it, because no actual historical struggle
can take place in a no-man's-land of abstract humanity ; it must
be carried on in the actual existing framework of State institu-
tions, with the possibilities they offer for seizing power and
fighting political battles. The question is, whether the nation-
alistic flavour of the battle is its determining aspect, the one
which will most influence the future. I have said that it is not,
and I deliberately exaggerated the polemical aspect of my paper,
because I think it was in the interest of the debate for me to do so.
I would like to present the problem of nationalism as part of
the question of a possible international order of society. It was
repeatedly said here that the real Fall, the starting-point of the
St. Vitus' dance of ideologies and of totalitarian movements,
was not the logical result of a particular philosophy or set of
deas, but the outcome of the First World War. And the First
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Criticism and Discussion
World War was not the collapse of a particular social order
bourgeois or capitalist, democratic or totalitarian It was the
collapse of an international order that knew of no principle of
organization except nationalism that possessed no statesmen
capable of thinking on an International scale. And the real
question I want to ask In speaking of nationalism Is whether,
even for us, nationalism Is still the only conceivable principle of
integration. For in the course of history nationalism has served
as the principle of Integration for the European community,
which transcended Its small particularisms and individualist
features and built up a sense of homogeneity. The nationalism of
the great nationalist powers in Europe was not a spontaneous
development among people of a national feeling that had existed
from the first ; it was a deliberately-propagated sense of union,
intended to promote the sense of integration, In connection
with the transfer of the principle of legitimacy from the absolute
ruler to the nation, which became the new principle of unity.
By yesterday's standards, though not by those of today, those
great powers were too large to generate a spontaneous feeling of
unity. Their nationalism was always a form of artificial,
synthetic, ideological cohesion, backed up by all the State
institutions, including the schools. By today's standards, on the
universal scale these States have become too small, and we are
confronted by the question of whether or not we can devise a
supranational, pluralistic, federalist principle of integration
for a supranational order of society which will guarantee the
right of every group not only the existing nations, but every
group with individual characteristics to develop freely.
ALBERT HOURANI: . . . nationalists directed towards the future
The modern nation states are our equivalents of the warlords of
the past. The form is different because the circumstances are
different. You have a spread of education which makes everyone
able and eager to help in the political process. You have the loss
of the idea of a divine order which the successor can preserve
and which gives him his legitimate title to succeed. You have the
collapse of the traditional communities into which people can
withdraw. The State and its policy matter much more to every
Individual than they did in the past. And so this process of disin-
tegration has become a conscious one. What was in previous
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Criticism and Discussion
days a struggle of armies has become a struggle of Ideas and of
parties, a search for a valid principle of cohesion and of legiti-
macy, a search also for a government or a ruler which embodies
it. Now at this point, something arbitrary enters in.
It is at this point that, searching for a principle of legitimacy,
people in Asia and Africa took over ideas from Europe. There
was something almost accidental about it; but one can trace the
process. To take an example in Egyptian nationalism : It was,
one can say, almost an accident that one of the first theorists of
Egyptian nationalism went to Paris in the first age of European
Egyptology. His imagination was touched by the image of
ancient Egypt in Paris and not in Cairo. But it is not wholly
arbitrary, for what was universal and essential was the sense of
European strength. Europe, for Asia and Africa, was to be
feared, but also to be admired. And there took place the clas-
sical movement of the nineteenth and earliest twentieth cen-
turies : the search for the secret of European strength, which was
found in national unity and loyalty. Nationalism, to put it in
other words, is the irrational factor, the attractive force which
serves to bind people together into a community. Strictly it
means nothing except to those who feel it because they are con-
scious of being members of a community. But we are the
prisoners of our own choice. Once adopted, the national idea
gathers to itself other ideas, and some of these may be nihilistic
ideas : self-worship, assertion of will, the right to expand. But to
say this is simply to say that man is sinful, that any belief can be
prolonged in a wrong direction: the necessary self-confidence
of an imperial people has become the idea of racial inequality.
Even liberalism in a nature not strong enough to bear its noble
ideals can degenerate into a sort of moral hysteria. Whether
nationalism takes this wrong turning depends on innumerable
factors : on whether the idea of divine law still exists, whether the
judiciary is free, whether the university is free, whether the
nation at the beginning of its independent career is fortunate
enough to find leaders who possess not only the political power
to win independence and to organize it but a genuine moral
sensibility, etc.
The world is now divided into nation-states, but a new
problem arises, for which the idea of the nation is still essential.
The idea of social and economic development involves, as we all
know, government intervention over the whole range of life, the
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Criticism and Discussion
active co-operation of people with government, a sense of social
responsibility, a willingness to sacrifice present to future goods,
and a new relationship between the independent state and the
outside world. For all these purposes, cohesion and solidarity
and unity are necessary. There must still be some irrational force
of attraction which holds together the community. In the mod-
em world, in Asia and Africa, I can see two such forces of
attraction : there is the force of the Communist idea and there is
the force of popular nationalism. And this popular nationalism
is attracting to itself new ideas, any ideas which advance its
developments.
One could say, putting it briefly, that the past has been abol-
ished, that the eyes of the nationalists of the present generation
are directed not towards the real or supposed glories of the past
but towards the future, real or imagined, with the great dams and
irrigation works as its symbols. One could say also that the
problem of East and West, in its nineteenth-century form, has
been abolished : new divisions in the world have been created.
You have, then, a new sort of nationalism, a new popular
nationalism, dynamic, with its necessities but also with its diffi-
culties and dangers : the danger of conflict, the danger of self-
worship and the danger of the denial of the individual in the
interest, real or imagined, of social welfare. Again in some cir-
cumstances you have the possibility of this idea being pushed to
the extreme of nihilism. What are the factors in the modern
world, in the new nation-states which incline this new popular
nationalism towards the revolution of nihilism and what are the
other factors which may make it possible to achieve what
Professor Polanyi has called a 'suspended logic', or a 'will to
live together'?
HANS KOHN: . . . the indispensable democratic legitimation . . ,
Professor Liithy spoke, above all, about the European situa-
tion. There Nationalism to a certain extent fulfilled its purpose
of acting as a medium of integration whereas in Asia, Africa and
in Latin- America today Nationalism provides what might be
called 'the Democratic Legitimation indispensable for every
government today'. In Asia or Africa or Latin- America, a stable
government of any kind is unthinkable today without this
'legitimation'. Only where the existing government whether
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Criticism and Discussion
it be a "colonial government 5 , or a traditional government
only where autocracies have not adjusted in time to the changing
conditions, nationalism has taken a violent character. On the
whole, I would say, from the experience of forty years of study
of Asian and Middle-Eastern nationalism that the transition has
been much more smoothly done than I would have thought
possible. Nationalism is an answer to rapid social and above all
psychological transformations in Asia, Africa and Latin-
America, and 1 think that only Nationalism can find there a
fairly general acceptance as a means of integration. On the
other hand, and there I would agree with Professor Liithy, the
situation in Europe which had come to the very same process
150 years ago is very different. As to Nationalism in the Com-
munist orbit, I would like to recall that when the Russians
resisted the German aggression in 1941-2 Stalin did not make
any appeal whatsoever to ideas of social justice or Marxism, but
purely to what might be called Great Russian Patriotism and
called not upon the fighters of the revolution but upon the ' great
ancestors', among them Christian saints, feudal princes and
czarist generals.
WALTHER HOFER: . . . in Africa, we have ' independentism* . . .
I think it is very risky for Mr. Liithy, in his paper, to reject
deliberately, from the start, the idea of any differentiation
between what we may call constructive or justifiable nationalism
and what the terrorist ideologies call nationalism. All of us agree
with what he said about that kind of nationalism. But if we
lump together all the historical phenomena that have been con-
nected with the concept of nationalism, I do not think we shall
be helping to make history comprehensible; for we shall be
bringing into juxtaposition things which in my opinion, even if
our ideas of the situation are inadequate, should be kept as far
apart as may be. Mr. Kohn has already pointed out and here I
feel sure Mr. Liithy agrees with us that there was, after all, a
stage of historical development when nationalism did not pro-
mote disintegration, when its influence was not destructive
when it contributed to integration by assembling the political
rubble of separatism into viable units. I need only mention the
nineteenth century, with the examples of Germany, Italy, the
114
Criticism and Discussion
United States of America too, if you Iike 5 and on a smaller scale,
our common fatherland, the Swiss Confederation, to which Mr.
Liithy, too, makes some references in his paper. Mr. Liithy said
that the world that came to an end in 1914-18 was one which
could think only in terms of nationalism. I think another mis-
understanding might arise here. In my opinion there has so far
been only one period in the history of Europe where the nation-
alist principle really dominated as far as was possible in the
circumstances, and that was the period between the two world
wars. Mr. Liithy rightly mentioned the disastrous consequences
of the dismemberment of the Eastern empires the Austro-
Hungarian, the Russian, the Ottoman and pointed out that
the slogan, or principle of the right of peoples to self-determina-
tion did not finally lead to any durable order of things. But
whether, because of that, we should totally reject that idea, and
the attempts it led to, seems to me to be a very different ques-
tion. I think we should not be too pedagogic in our attitude
towards history ; I think we should not overlook the fact that
the communities established in 1919, and more especially the
steady, organized course that certain of them seemed to be
following from 1925 onwards, had a very good chance of pro-
ducing permanent historical effects. Our experience of the
Second World War and the utterly pathological, almost unimag-
inable National Socialist regime in Germany do not entitle us
to assume that the statesmen of 1920 should have anticipated
such a development for it lay right outside the framework of
European history, even of world history.
Mr. Liithy very rightly complains, and so do others, that the
concept of nationalism seems to have lost all substance nowa-
days and that it is no longer possible to put forward any positive
definition of it. He was right, too, in saying that in the field of
international law, "United Nations' is now the accepted term,
so that every political structure which is admitted to the United
Nations is automatically regarded as a nation. All the same,
ladies and gentlemen, I consider that we should be extremely
wary about applying the word * nationalism 9 to what is going on,
for instance, in Africa south of the Sahara. When Mr. Liithy
mentions the existence of an African nationalism a continent-
wide nationalism and then the existence of separate nation-
alisms in the Congo, the Cameroons, Ghana, Guinea and so
forth, and then also the existence of tribal nationalisms, I begin
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Criticism and Discussion
to ask myself what kind of a concept It is that can fit them all.
I do not flatter myself that I can delete the term from the inter-
national vocabulary ; but I personally would be chary of describ-
ing all these as nationalism. I think the concept that fits them all
is a diiierent one ; we might call it the emancipation movement,
we might call it the movement for political autonomy ; if you
insist on an 'ism we can coin a horrible new one and call it
'independentism* ; or what you will. But not nationalism, for as
Mr. Liithy took particular care to point out today, these regions,
consisting for the most part of former colonial administrative
units, now to become nations or States within their old frontiers,
have none of the objective features which we, in the course of
European history, have come to associate with nationality.
And we must not overlook the fact that the national groups in
Europe, within the supra-national or multi-national empires,
existed as actual historical units before ever they achieved
political autonomy. Whereas in Africa it is usually the other way
round a certain territory achieves political autonomy and is
admitted to the United Nations as a State, although it possesses
not one objective feature that would justify its being designated
as a national group or nation in the traditional sense.
A. K. BROHI:... ideals are the masculine principle of history . . .
I think the greatest historian of Europe, Mr. Fisher, in his intro-
duction to the history of Europe, said that nationalism realizes
the post-Protestant phenomenon in Europe. It was after the
revolt against the ecclesiastical authority of the Pope in Rome
revolt that was established in the name of the principalities and
feudal aristocracies that prevailed in Europe that nationalism
manifested itself. It just came to be as an event in history. There
was not a conscious participation in history in terms of some
ideas having triumphed. History can be divided into two chap-
ters : the first in which human conduct whether in its individu-
alized or in its collective aspect is sanctioned by religion ; that
is an external sanction. The post-Protestant phenomenon in
Europe inaugurates a new chapter in human history in that the
locus of the sanctioning power is not outside the individual but is
within him. It is really thereafter that human history, in any
fundamental sense, is made. Before then there was no history.
Human history, in so far as it is responsible, conscious, in so far
116
Criticism and Discussion
as the human individual participates and makes history is a post-
Protestant phenomenon and fundamentally your European
civilization is Protestant in that sense. To the extent to which
that consciousness becomes alert, to the extent to which the
mind becomes rational and is able to deal with enormous irra-
tional forces which are still operating in history, and constitute
its feminine principle, to that extent conscious participation
makes it appear that the ideals of enlightened men have found
an incarnation and an embodiment in human history.
When we speak about Asian nationalism and African nation-
alism, the problem seems to me to be simple. Much of that
nationalism was inspired by the expansion of the liberal ideals
of the West. Most of the pioneers of national movements in the
national democracies of Asia and Africa were men educated in
the cradle of European civilization. And, consequently, the
national movements are imitative in Asia. But that is not the
whole story : although they began that way, they are coming into
their own. There is a triumphant ascendancy of those ideals.
They become more and more associated with material realiza-
tions. I think that ideals are the masculine principle of history,
but mere masculinity is not creative ; it has to have a feminine
complement and that feminine complement is furnished by the
irrational forces, by the passive, material setting of history.
Once man assumes the responsibility of his capacity to fertilize
the currents of history, once he sees that the creative process
depends on himself, he becomes a responsible historical agent
and is participating in history.
PIETER GEYL: . . .a natural reaction to the denial of fundamental
rights . . .
Mr. Liithy's paper looks like a diatribe against nationalism.
And yet towards the end, he says that he does in the least question
the strength or justification of specifically national phenomena
or of those rooted in national traditions. He seems quite sympa-
thetic to the demand for autonomy by cultural, religious or even
simply regional units for individual freedom of thought or
behaviour, permitting individuals as well as historical and
social groups to breathe and develop freely, but he adds that
such a demand is not in essence nationalistic. Maybe. The word
has crude, unpleasant associations and I have myself grown
117
Criticism and Discussion
weary of using it In a positive sense as 1 used to do in all inno-
cence during a large part of my life. In all Innocence, for not only
don't I hold now, but I never held any of these objectionable
opinions which Mr. Liithy associates with nationalism. I have
never been sufficiently naive to have believed that a nation arose
from the Instinctive action of a native soul 1 don't even know
what a native soul is I care very little for rights and institutions
for the training of national feelings, I detest anything in the
nature of a terrorist ideology that imposes conformity of
thought and behaviour in fact I regard such conformity as
quite undesirable and I don't think that it ought to go with the
conception of nationality. As for enmity, suspicion or prejudice
towards other national groups, I am not In the least inclined to
foster any of these feelings. I may say that, even during the occu-
pation of Holland, when I was Interned by the occupying auth-
orities for three and a half years, 1 never allowed myself to
become anti-German. I held fast to the distinction between
National Socialism and the German people. If I may continue to
speak personally, I do not regard the Dutch nation as the salt of
the earth, or the Dutch language as the most beautiful In the
world. I do not shun contact with other national ways of
thinking ; I do not want to Isolate Holland behind a Chinese wall
of self-complacency. Nevertheless, I feel that a Dutchman
should not try to get rid of Ms 'Dutchness'. We must remain
Dutch in order to be Europeans.
Now, judging by the passage I quoted in which lie admitted
the right of regional communities to breathe and develop freely,
Mr. Liithy must feel some sympathy with this attitude of mind.
But let me point out that this fundamental right is very often
disregarded by the larger groups or states in which a small
cultural or linguistic community has by the accidental course of
history, become incorporated. Nothing is more inevitable, and
justified, than that such a community should not tamely submit
to the denial of its freedom to breathe and develop. It seems to
me unrealistic to demand of it that it should appeal only to
general human rights when it feels that Its own collective rights
are at stake. (And often enough, it will find nothing but indiffer-
ence on the part of other and more powerful groups.) I submit to
Mr. Liithy, then, that in the struggle for its rights, nationalism,
that he has held up to scorn, very often signs its origin ; its appear-
ance may still be unpleasant but It Is well to remember neverthe-
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Criticism and Discussion
less that in many cases it is the natural response to the denial of
fundamental rights. I am confining myself, as you will notice, to
an examination of the problem of nationalism of oppressed
or at least somewhat unequally treated national groups.
In my youth as a member of the Flemish nationalist move-
ment I had to wage a war on two fronts, against the indifference
of Dutch public opinion, on one hand, and against the extrem-
ists that shoved themselves within the movement, on the other
hand. 'Death to Belgians', Flanders to be joined with Holland
in one great Netherland state, demands which flew in the face of
history and practical politics. Then when in 1933 National
Socialism came into power in Germany, many of the war-
impatient and unbalanced Flemish nationalists fell under that
pernicious influence. Before the war broke out, I had become
isolated, I learned the hard lesson that nationalism, however
natural and needful it may be, has a tendency towards extrem-
ism. I saw the same thing in Ireland, I saw it in South Africa.
There were men among the Flemish nationalists who knew
where to stop, but many of them did not. So I learned the hard
lesson. Do I now draw the conclusion that the nationalist move-
ment was a mistake from the beginning? And that I ought never
to have meddled with it? Certainly not. In the end, a minority
of the Flemish nationalists collaborated with the Germans, the
nationalists themselves were only a fraction of the Flemish
movement, and what the misguided extremists, intoxicated by
the slogans of nationalism and absolutism, destroyed, was not
Belgium or the peace of the world, they destroyed themselves
and the nationalist party. But in the twenties, this party had
made a powerful contribution to the regeneration of the Flem-
ish people, to the breaking of the ascendancy of the denation-
alized upper classes in Flanders, to paving the way for a closer
and a culturally fruitful contact between Flanders and Holland,
and I remember my close association with it gratefully, and I
may say not without some pride.
HUGH SETON-WATSON: . . the Soviet way of dealing with the
national question , . .
Two distinctions emerge from what we have heard. One is
between nationalism as an historical force in Europe, and
nationalism as a growing contemporary force in Asia and Africa,
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Criticism and Discussion
and the second is between a movement for national independ-
ence and on the other hand, nationalism as an intolerant doc-
trine in power, using the means of power to oppress other
people. It seems very striking that the nationalist movement
which came into free expression for a few days in Hungary and
somewhat less openly for several months in Poland, was an
astonishing kind of reversion to the liberal nationalism of the
middle of the nineteenth century. I mean the events in Hungary
in 1956 were almost a fantastic repetition of 1848 : we had the
same combination of a desire for liberty, with the willingness to
respect other people's liberty and indeed I think probably, a
greater willingness on the part of the Hungarian revolution of
1956 to respect the liberty of others than was shown by the
Hungarian revolutionaries of Kossuth in 1848, who did not
show much respect when they came to the point of the liberties
of Croats, Slovaks or other nations. The Hungarian revolution
has been retrospectively damned by the Soviets as a Fascist
movement and the endless repetition of this calumnious slogan
eventually had a certain effect on the minds of West European
liberals and socialists who ought to have known better. This is a
regrettable fact, but it should not make us blind to the truth,
which was that this was a kind of liberal, libertarian nationalism
returning to the best traditions. And now, we may look at the
Afro-Asians. The problem is very different, I think. The point
which I would like to stress is that the peoples of Asia and
Africa, and particularly the more recent nationalists of tropical
Africa, are bound to come up against all the problems that
nationalists came up against in Europe. They don't seem to
realize it sufficiently, and this is a thing which somewhat alarms
me. I have lately studied Soviet literature on Africa, particu-
larly the Soviet Journal of Ethnography and certain oriental
studies which devote an enormous amount of attention to the
problems of linguistic nationalism and of multi-national states.
The Soviets have built up a very complicated and rather
interesting theory, based to some extent on the history of the old
Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union, on the evolution of
tribes into national groups, national groups into nationalities
and nationalities into nations. The theory is very clear, if one
studied the subject : their aims are to use the multi-lingual and
multi-national characters of the African states to create division
and to play them off against each other and eventually impose
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Criticism and Discussion
on all a uniform pattern of Soviet nationality policy. Now the
Soviets have their own ready-made formula for dealing with the
national question and their aim is to encourage a development
in Africa, and in Asia too, of units of a type which they have
experienced and manipulated. You impose a totalitarian regime,
you encourage a free development for the expression of correct
orthodox opinions in all the languages that are spoken; you
then proclaim that, unlike in the past, this society is now based
on a complete brotherhood of all nations in the state who are no
longer oppressing each other, but are brothers, all equal before
the law. You proclaim this with a vast propaganda machine.
At the same time, you keep the masses of the people mobilized
in constant demonstrations and public proclamations of this
brotherhood, until the combination of mass propaganda, use of
the native language and the whole totalitarian set-up does in
fact deal with the problem. Now, it really is striking, con-
sidering that the Moslem peoples of the Soviet Union are sur-
rounded by independent Turkey, Persia, Pakistan, Afghanistan
and are not so far from India, in all of which countries nation-
alism is a strong force, that the people of Soviet central Asia
have been kept in fact immune to any influence from the other
countries.
One might, I think, argue that France could solve the Algerian
problem in this manner, using this combination of mobilization,
propaganda and preaching of a synthetic doctrine of brother-
hood and totalitarian set-up, but on one condition, of course,
that is, that the whole people of France became totalitarian, too.
And this is a price which the French people will, I think, never
pay and God forbid that they should! I am just saying this to
show that this sort of thing could be done elsewhere and I sup-
pose if the French Communist party were allowed by Moscow
to control Algeria as a matter of tactical convenience, it would
in fact try it.
My last point is that the problem of the multi-national state,
the problem of linguistic division and the domination of one
language group over another language group, is a problem with
which we are going to have to live for a very long time. There is
no ready-made solution of any kind and our friends in Asia and
Africa are going to have to deal with this problem. I have only
sympathy for them in their efforts to find a solution, but please
let us get away from any kind of idea that the experience of
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Criticism and Discussion
Europe or the experience of Asia Is unique or that there is any-
thing special about the African personality which makes it
immune to these difficulties. It seems to me that the doctrine of
racialism, of racial superiority or inferiority is odious and
utterly unacceptable in any form, including its inverted form,
and just as it is utterly insufferable that the White South
Africans should say that the Bantus, because they are Bantus,
are inferior, so I think it is utterly insufferable that the Africans
should think that, because they are Africans, they are immune to
these problems of linguistic division themselves or that imperi-
alism is something of which only white people are capable.
JEANNE HERSCH: . . . nationalism has lost its substantial
reality . . .
I do not agree with Mr. Brohi, that real history begins with the
Reformation. I quite agree that from the standpoint from which
he approaches the matter, the Reformation constitutes a deci-
sive turning-point. But I do not think we can say that it repre-
sents the beginning of conscious history, because then we
should have to concede that conscious history began with a
radical distinction, a struggle, between the two the masculine
and the feminine principles involved. Whereas I believe that
there was a kind of affectionate thought, of thinking affection
that there was a thoughtful way of loving, a loving way of
thinking; and I do not believe we can date the inception of
history from the more radical disruption of those links.
The real human revolutions are undertaken on behalf of
beloved things, or beings, with the intention of enabling them to
exist. In other words, change is effected out of love for some-
thing which exists under inappropriate circumstances, but
which does exist.
And now, what about nationalism? I think nationalism has
changed its sex. At certain periods of past history, nationalism
had a weighty feminine aspect. At certain other periods though
this is a mere outline and I cannot go into much detail it was
probably, so to speak, a couple, with a dual life. And nowadays
nationalism, even when it arises in the countries that are seeking
independence for the first time, is a male principle, in the mean-
ing we have attributed to it; in other words, it is an ideology;
in fact it is a pass-word, a sign a banner, if you like. It has
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Criticism and Discussion
divested Itself of Its former material substance. And I think that
nationalism can no longer., as Mr, Polanyi's paper Mnts 5 act as a
revival of substance and weight on the political and Ideological
horizon of the present day.
In this respect I entirely agree with Mr. Liithy ; we have to in-
vent something else. But that brings us up against the paradox
Inherent In our situation a paradox that dooms our discus-
sions, however Intelligent and Interesting they may be, to a
sterility not confined to our meeting here, but extending to the
whole present-day effort to think things out. For the fact Is that
we are trying to arrive by way of thought by an effort of subtle,
detached thought at a weight of attachment which cannot be
reached, Invented, suggested by thought. It is almost as though
we were trying to create something ancient, to conceive of some-
thing substantial and give substance to our conception. And
that, in my opinion, Is the essential difficulty that confronts us
today in our search for what we feel we lack and must have.
Mr. Liithy suggested that federalism might be the path to take.
In my opinion It is the only proper path on the level on which
the problem of nationalism arises ; but that proper path, the
path of federalism, must be correctly understood, so as never to
lose sight of the element of weight and of established, long-
standing fact that must be Included in It.
CZESLAW MILOSZ: . . . the content depends on the social
structure . . .
I am a Pole and every Pole is a rabid nationalist and Is lacking In
International feeling, so I am in a happy position here that, not
being a scholar who looks at national problems from a detached
attitude, I can jump with both my feet into the pie. If I under-
stand Mr. Liithy well, he would like to purify the struggle for
Independence in Africa and Asia from the stain of nationalism
or of nationalist doctrines as they were elaborated in Europe.
In any case, this is a question of terminology, because in Con-
tinental Europe we use the term 'nationalism' to designate a
certain national doctrine while, in the Anglo-Saxon world, It
has a different meaning. I agree completely with Mr. Liithy that
In Europe we never use the term 'nationalism' because it has
very unpleasant connotations. Progressive movements of the
beginning of the nineteenth century became more and more
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Criticism and Discussion
reactionary and bloodthirsty up to recent times and we wit-
nessed many terrible things during the last war. Yet even in the
national doctrine immediately preceding the last war, we should
make certain distinctions. It depended very much upon the
structure of a given society. In such purely peasant societies as
the Baltic States or the Ukraine, nationalism had a clear class
character, it was a peasant nationalism and, curiously enough,
it was connected with a movement of creating co-operatives, not
co-operatives in the kolkhoz sense, but organizations for the
marketing of agricultural products. One basic and important
factor has not been mentioned here, connected with what is
called today mass culture. We have been witnessing during our
lifetime a progressive russification of Russia: I mean that a
Russian who before the Revolution had a very small share in the
Russian national heritage, became, through millions of editions
of so-called Russian classics, much more Russian than he was
before the Revolution. This phenomenon repeats itself every-
where and is very clearly visible in the eastern part of Europe
with the consequence that Poles become more Polish, Hungar-
ians more Hungarian* Russians more Russian. From this point
of view, I find that a study of the time of Pushkin, at the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century, can teach us much more about
the present development in Russia than the study of Marx.
This factor introduces enormous changes and we witness a
breakdown of nationalist doctrines as they were elaborated
before the last war. For instance, in such countries as Poland or
Hungary, the whole nationalist doctrine was completely broken
down and suppressed, in my opinion with rather happy results.
So it is no wonder that national feelings visible in the Hungarian
Revolution bore some features of the big uprising of '48, because
the national reactionary doctrine broke down in such countries
as Hungary or Poland, while national feeling has taken other,
more attractive forms. Thus I would reproach one thing to Mr.
Liithy : his detached attitude, his lack of sympathy for national-
ism, are by no means his peculiar characteristics and they were
shared by many progressive minds in Eastern Europe, They
fought against nationalistic doctrines but the result was that
they were throwing away the baby together with the bath- water.
The tragedy of many Polish progressive movements was that
they abandoned the monopoly of national feeling to the most
reactionary and right-wing circles, the error for instance of Rosa
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Criticism and Discussion
Luxemburg, who did not take into account the particular nat-
ional factors, was one of the reasons for the total defeat of the
Polish Communist Party. It is a general tendency of inter-
national Socialism and Communism to neglect what is particular
of a certain situation in a given country and it explains their
falling completely under the rule of the Kremlin.
EHSAN KARACHI: . . . traditional roots . . .
Nationalism had been referred to as a calamity ; certain forms of
it have been extolled, others have been deplored. I think this is a
rather abstract approach to the problem. At any rate, as far as
the Middle East and my own country Iran are concerned, I
can safely say that nationalism has frequently been a movement
grouping and assembling the most various elements, and that it
has represented both a tribute to the feeling of justice, of law-
ful, democratic government and a tribute to the ideals of the
past. I therefore disagree with my friend Professor Hourani
when he says that Middle Eastern nationalism is too ration-
alistic and nihilistic.
I would say that if Middle Eastern nationalism had not been
rooted in tradition and impelled by religious force, it could never
have succeeded as a movement. Take Iran as an example, even
though it is true that conditions were different there from
those in other Arab countries, because Iran had never been
occupied by a foreign colonial power. In 1906, when the first
democratic movements for the establishment of a lawful, demo-
cratic government were launched, there was a surge of anti-
foreign feeling as a reaction against Russian pressure; but at the
same time there was considerable religious support; it was the
priests, the mullahs, who were in the forefront of this movement
and who extolled the religious principles of the Koran, accusing
the Government of abandoning those principles and of lapsing
into nihilism. The subsequent movements, too, were inspired
to a great extent by religious feelings. I would say that in the
Middle East the prime consideration is the search for lawful
government and a feeling of justice, rather than an inspiration
towards social and economic development.
This is a point on which our Western friends are often
mistaken. The Middle East does not begin by calculations, those
countries do not look at problems in the same way as the West
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Criticism and Discussion
does : questions of national income, investment and so forth
are often the calculations of experts, which do not reflect the
feelings of those whose foremost aspiration is to arrive at a
measure of lawful government.
ALTIERO SPINELLI: . . .patriotism and nationalism . . .
I do not know whether nationalism is male or female ; but what-
ever its sex may be it undoubtedly manages to have a great many
husbands or a great many wives. For if we regard nationalism as
a certain feeling of solidarity among the members of a partic-
ular group of people solidarity which is usually based on
language and tradition, solidarity which in some cases is felt
only by an elite, while in other cases it extends to large sections of
the population we find that it may serve as a principle of inte-
gration, or that it may play a part in various combinations. In
some instances the purpose of nationalism is to promote a
certain separatism, to defend the autonomy of a particular
group within an established political system ; this is the case with
the Flemish national movement. Then there is another nation-
alism, which is prompted by the definite wish to become
independent of a foreign power, as for instance, Italian
nationalism. German nationalism, on the other hand, was not
directed against any foreign power. Nationalism of former
colonial peoples is a search for freedom and so are nationalist
forces within the Soviet Empire. There is also a nationalism which
is the factor of human solidarity resulting directly from the
dangers of wartime, summoned up by the appeals to tradition,
by exhortations to defend home, parents, etc. This form of
nationalism is to be met with everywhere where there is a war
going on even under regimes which are not and do not wish to
be nationalistic; Russian leaders, for instance, appealed during
the war to national feeling, though with some degree of cold
political calculation, that is to say with the desire to make use of
a certain form of integration additional to that which was really
the raison d'etre of the system itself.
In all these cases, defence of a cultural system, desire for inde-
pendence, defence against military aggression, nationalism or
one might say patriotism has its attractive aspects. It also has
less attractive aspects, for it frequently incites people to hate
their fellow-men simply because they speak a different language
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Criticism and Discussion
and have different traditions ; but I would say that In any event
it Is never unduly dangerous. In cases where It Is directed against
established authority it even has a certain absolute value,
because it is always a good thing for the established authority to
encounter a certain resistance.
But we have been led, in our own day, to speak of nationalism
as a poison, an illness, because nationalism can form yet another
affinity ; it may become the principle that upholds authority, it
may ally itself to the established authority ; and I think the word
'nationalism 5 should be reserved for such cases as this, the term
'patriotism 5 being used for the others. Nationalism In this sense
was bom not very long ago ; I would even say that It was In-
vented by the French during the French Revolution, when they
abolished the legitimacy of royalty. During the French Revo-
lution the Girondlns tried to establish the principle of a com-
munity based on freedom ; but this experiment soon collapsed
whereas It had proved successful in America a few years
earlier. The nation was set up In place of the king. The nation
was the legitimate embodiment of authority. The French Revo-
lution gave rise to two parallel types of legitimate authority,
national and democratic the will of the people and the will of
the nation. And that has survived until the present day, when
we see that the man who wields the power in France, de Gaulle,
believes that the French people are merely confirming a legiti-
mate authority which is not constituted by the French people
but by France by the nation.
After the French had invented this principle almost involun-
tarily, because in its early days the French Revolution wanted to
be cosmopolitan It was applied in other European countries
and developed Into a malady that spread all over the continent.
I think Liithy was correct in saying that during the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries it acted as the principle of organization,
of integration, in the system of European communities. This
does not mean that it found universal application ; but we find in
history that whenever a movement succeeded in invoking the
national principle as its justification for starting a war, for
destroying one State or creating another, there was always a
prejudice in its favour. And that favourable prejudice continued
right up to the end of the attempt to unite all Germans in the
Third Reich. Even when Hitler wanted to seize Austria, the
Sudetenland and so forth, the rest used to say 'After all, what
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Criticism and Discussion
he wants is quite fair' in accordance with the principle that all
the members of a nation must belong to one State and that the
raison d'etre of a State is the nation.
Now when a State is based on the nation it has an inevitable
tendency towards totalitarianism towards a situation in which
the individual citizen becomes a mere tool which has to obey
the established authority because that authority is serving the
nation that new idea, one might almost say that new divinity.
The experience that Europe has undergone, was and still is for
we have not yet emerged from it a fundamentally negative
experience. This experience should compel us to meditate over
our history in order to show what were the fatal elements first
in the Italian and German movements, and then in the First
World War, which checked the attempt to endow Europe with a
supra-national organization. It was an attempt which began in
1815 in Vienna and which might have had further developments.
We Europeans should feel a certain obligation to warn the new
States which are now being formed in Africa and Asia against
this danger, by constantly reminding them that it is one thing to
have a community with certain characteristics and traditions
which this community wishes to defend and is entitled to defend
a community on the principle of placing the authority at the
service of the citizens, since this is the foundation of freedom ;
and that it is quite a different thing though the tendency easily
arises, because patriotic feelings exist everywhere to seek for
the principle of integration along the easier road by saying 'Let
us try to form a nation'. There may always be a tendency to
consider that it doesn't matter very much if the nation does not
exist at the outset if there are only separate tribes with different
traditions. The most firmly-established nation in the world to-
day is the French nation; and it is one which was created by the
central authority. In the case of the Italians, the nation may be
said to have existed before the State ; but that cannot be said of
France, for France was created by the French State. In a con-
tinent like Africa, where every possibility still lies open, new
paths may be chosen, but there is also the risk that undesirable
examples may be followed, in ignorance of the dangers. It would
be very dangerous if the idea were to gain ground that national-
ism, of no matter what kind that of Senegal, that of the Congo,
that of Africa as a whole should be the foundation of the
State. That is a negative principle and should be rejected.
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Criticism and Discussion
FRANgois BONDY: . . the impracticable German national-
ism
I feel that here in Berlin it is not possible to talk about nation-
alism in general, without saying a few words about the very
special and very central problem of 'German nationalism 9 . For
when I heard Professor Hofer say just now that there had been
certain instances of successful national integration during the
nineteenth century, I was reminded that yesterday, at a very
stirring meeting held on that very stirring date June 17th the
Prime Minister of a German 'Land' said that the relations
between Germany and Poland should be based on the fact that
certain frontiers had been established by treaties in the four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries. The Poles among us were ex-
tremely surprised, and there were others, too, who felt no
inclination to support this German claim, because so much has
happened since the fifteenth century, and particularly in our own
century. When we think of the twentieth century and of the
nineteenth, we have to recognize that there have been many
instances of the successful integration of a people into a State
and nation. By and large it was, I think, successful in France ; it
succeeded in the Scandinavian countries partly through inte-
gration and partly through disintegration ; it went without say-
ing in the British Isles, and to a certain extent the Irish have
brought it off too. The same applies to Italy, Spain and Por-
tugal. But there is one country in Europe in the centre of
Europe, its greatest continental power, Germany where inte-
gration has, in my opinion, never succeeded and never can
succeed. When one reflects on the fact that nationalism is insuffi-
cient for Europe as a formative and liberating principle, it seems
to me that Germany inevitably comes to mind. In 1848 the
democratic idea of German unification was shared by all Ger-
man-speaking peoples ; the Alsatians approved of it, the Ger-
man-speaking Austrians approved of it, and in France the Left,
the democrats, went much further than Bismarck. Marx and
Engels were ready to launch a campaign against all Germany's
neighbours and to see the Czech language abolished, for the
sake of this historical unity of the German language. But nothing
came of it. When the German national idea is identified with the
German language it has to take an imperialistic form. As
certain historians, such as Golo Mann and Ludwig DeMo, have
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Criticism and Discussion
shown, there are always two alternative demands : either for a
German Reich established according to the historical frontiers 3
which means including peoples that are not German-speaking ;
or for a German Reich based on the German language, which
means including peoples which have no desire to belong to the
German Federation' such as the Swiss, the Alsatians and so
forth. So it seems to me that Germany, in the centre of Europe,
constitutes a sort of camp set up among the other nations, which
makes the national principle impossible. And precisely because
yesterday , June 17th, we were reminded of the aspiration
towards the reunification of the free and the oppressed Germans
and of the German workers' uprising with which all of us
here, of course, are in deepest sympathy I think it is a good
thing to reflect that our feeling of solidarity arose out of the fact
that on that occasion there were no nationalist songs and no dis-
cordantly nationalistic note was struck ; there was undoubtedly
a national aspiration to reunify the historic Germany that is now
divided, but certain demands of a social, cultural and humanistic
nature were very much to the fore. And since in the course of
history German nationalism has been less concerned with the
claims of humanism than other forms of nationalism, it has a
greater need than other forms of nationalism to be elevated by
other principles, which we might call federative ones. It is no
mere accident that 'The Marseillaise *, although it is such a
bloodthirsty song, sends a thrill of brotherly feeling through
men in all the five continents, for it has a kind of universal,
liberating attraction. Whereas as we found yesterday, the
German national song, composed by Hoffmann von Fallers-
leben, beautiful and noble though it is, awakens no response in
non-Germans. German nationalism, as such, embodies a prin-
ciple which is narrow, yet carries a certain risk of explosion ; and
we, who look forward to liberation and freedom for all Germans
and all other East Europeans, should stipulate that here, in par-
ticular, this idea of liberation must be kept most carefully free
from any discordant nationalistic note.
THEODOR LITT: . . the European duty of the Germans . . .
I think the hearts of all the Germans in this assembly were
touched, for Mr. Bondy laid his finger on the whole tragedy of
Germany's destiny and on Germany's well-known errors too. I
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Criticism and Discussion
think that in reply I can say : When we consider historical cir-
cumstances we should be careful not to assume that a solution
exists for every given situation. People are always going up to
heads of States and to those responsible for deciding spiritual
matters, and demanding that they find a solution for some com-
plicated situation in which they are involved. I think we shall
never have a clear grasp of history unless we realize that certain
situations are insoluble and that the only way of dealing with
them is to overstep the boundaries of what have hitherto been
the accepted forms of life. The terrible fate we are suffering is
due to the failure of the German nation to make its national
frontiers and its political limits coincide. And I agree that we
Germans must desist from basing our claim to frontiers to which
we believe we have title, on historical memories. On the con-
trary we should open our eyes to the fact that what has hap-
pened in East Germany has led to such a confusion of territorial
boundaries and cultural commitments, that it is impossible to
conceive of any historical solution that might bring them to a
completely satisfactory conclusion. We have to remember that
the first man to present the national idea to us Germans was
Johann Gottfried Herder. When we read what he wrote about
the wealth of the nations and the fullness of the divine life that
manifests itself in the course of historical existence, we see at
once that nothing was further from his mind than to put forward,
on behalf of the nation, any kind of claim to political frontiers.
It is bad enough that in the course of its development,
and especially within the last forty years, the German nation
should have strayed so far from this free and open interpretation
of nationality. We have indeed paid dearly for that. But one
thing seems clear to me ; that in a world that is struggling to find
its form, we Germans cannot expect to find a satisfactory place
for ourselves anywhere, unless we make a determined return to
the greatness, the richness and freedom of Herder's interpreta-
tion of the nation. That interpretation, it seems to me, would
also show us that we can find a satisfactory existence only in a
world and in a Europe where the frontiers of individual States
have become a secondary consideration. So long as State
frontiers are regarded as setting up a division between the
people who live on either side of them, there can be no satisfac-
tory coexistence between different nations. And this leads me to
the opinion that if we are now to struggle for the concept of
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Criticism and Discussion
Europe and the form Europe is to take In future, we Germans,
by reason of our terrible sufferings in the course of history,
should come forward as the chief representatives of the pure,
ideal concept of Europe ; for it represents our only prospect of
achieving a satisfactory existence from the political standpoint
as well. And if this meeting has helped the German participants
to become more aware of this historical mission, it will have
been no small practical achievement.
FRODE JAKOBSEN \ ...in Asia, a feeling of responsibility . . .
I had an experience in the Philippines a year ago which was
something very enlightening for me, as a European visiting
Asia for the first time. It brought home to me our frequent habit
of calling quite different things by the same name, which is a
source of misunderstanding. Professor Liithy said that not all
the efforts to achieve independence can be described as nation-
alism in our sense of the word. I would go a bit further, for my
experience was that suddenly, in conversation with people who
called themselves Philippine nationalists, I realized that the term
nationalism meant something quite different for them from
what I had supposed. I had come to these people in a sceptical
mood, because I am well acquainted with European nation-
alism. But if you ask me to explain what nationalism meant for
them, I would say that it meant having a sense of responsibility
not only for one's own family which may be customary in
Asia or for a group of some kind, but for the whole nation,
Their nationalism was in no way opposed to internationalism,
competition with other nations played no part in it ; it even had
nothing to do with the fight for independence. They called them-
selves nationalists, and their nationalism consisted in that they
enlightened and prosperous townspeople used to go out to
poverty-stricken villages to show the village women how to
nourish their children better, and thus reduce the high infantile
mortality rate ; to show the peasants how to build houses that
are healthier to live in, and how to plant rice so as to get the best
yield from it. Thus there are people we call nationalists,
and who call themselves nationalists, who define nationalism as a
feeling of responsibility not only for oneself, for one's own
family, but for the larger unit known as the nation. This kind of
nationalism builds up a nation from within and need not, as we
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Criticism and Discussion
are apt to assume, have anything to do with foreign countries. I
saw that very clearly In the Philippines. But I think I came
across the same thing In other parts of Asia as well. Nation-
alism in the bad sense Is to be found In Asia too, of course 1
have no illusions as to that. But I feel that we In the West should
pay more heed to this particular element in what is known as
nationalism.
RICHARD LOWENTHAL: . . . the nation is formed by democratic
participation . . .
I am one of those who consider that the feeling or consciousness
of nationality plays a more positive role than Mr. Liithy be-
lieves. But I think his paper did great service by calling attention
to the dangerous vagueness of the concept of nationality as a
criterion for the creation of a State. If one rejects as Mr. Liithy
does, as I do, and as I believe all of us in this assembly do the
nationalistic view of the metaphysics of history ; if we refuse to
believe that the various nations are directly God-given, that they
existed from the beginning of history although they only gradu-
ally awoke to the realization that their common blood or com-
mon speech had set each of them apart, once and for all : if we
reject all this, then the question that naturally arises, as it has
now arisen so acutely in connection with Africa, for example, Is
the question of how one defines a nation, or how a nation de-
fines itself. And it seems to me that we have not yet produced a
completely satisfactory answer to that question, except Professor
Geyl in one of his comments. The point is that a nation is not
something that has existed from the very first : a nation is
brought into being by certain typical historical events, by those
events which determine in what form, at what stage and within
what boundaries a community awakens to a realization that its
members are participants in all its concerns. In other words, a
nation's first awareness of itself as such, and its awareness of
democracy are closely-related historical developments. Pro-
fessor Geyl himself belongs to a nation that offers a very
admirable example of this. If we try to define the Dutch from the
point of view of language, we find that they originally spoke a
form of Low German. The Dutch nation came to definite form
through the fact that in the battle against the Spanish domina-
tion, this northern part of Holland, and only this part, succeeded
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Criticism and Discussion
in winning its freedom and established democratic institutions
for itself. We can see very similar things happening in our own
day. There has been some mention of the German linguistic
frontiers in this meeting. Let us consider the extremely interest-
ing case of the German-speaking Austrians. Around and after
1848, after the constitution of Bismarck's Reich, and even after
1918, a great proportion of the Germans in Austria, who subse-
quently lived in the new Austrian State, felt themselves to be
Germans and regarded their State as a temporary structure,
created solely as a result of the ban on union with Germany
which was laid down in the Treaty of Versailles. After this feel-
ing of German nationality on the part of the Austrians had been
defeated on various occasions in 1848, in 1860-71 and in 1918
their wish was given a semblance of fulfilment by Hitler's
annexation of Austria. The result was that under the impression
of this experience the Germans of Austria lost their feeling of
being Germans and now really feel themselves to be Austrians
members of the Austrian nation as treaties had earlier declared
them to be, but without their being truly so. In this sense I
believe that the question of what a nation is, does not permit of
any hard and fast reply; the reply emerges in the course of
historical development, and in many countries has done so only
in our own time. There is no reason, a priori, why the boundaries
of such nations should be iked in the light of linguistic unity.
There is in fact no a priori criterion to determine where their
frontiers should lie. It depends much more upon the circum-
stances in which they attained independence, upon the develop-
ment of their new States. Any group that can combine to set up a
viable State in which all sections of the population can play a
part, wiH develop into a nation. And I think it is important for
us to recognize that there should be no attempt to anticipate
that development by applying any particular theory on the
subject. Now if this is so it becomes clear, it seems to me, that
there is a great gulf between this concept of the nation as result-
ing from a process of democratic participation, and any kind of
metaphysical concept; and also that the democratic concept of
what constitutes a nation does not provide any ground for
setting up the nation as the highest value any justification for
nationalism in the German sense of the term.
In conclusion I would like to say something about the view
that federalism and nationalism are contrasting terms. I think it
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Criticism and Discussion
is no accident that Mr. Liithy is Swiss. Historically speaking
Switzerland is unique, because its democratic institutions were
set up at a time when nationalism had not developed, and in
federal form. I do not think it would be possible in the world of
today, to substitute federal institutions in place of the institu-
tions of national self-determination. Tie only possibility is to
set them up as supra-national institutions of self-determination.
A form of federalism that declared itself to be a nihilistic nega-
tion of the national concept, would be inconsistent unless it
denied democracy as well. In this sense, Metternich was the only
consistent anti-nationalist who ever existed,
SIDNEY HOOK: . . institutions permitting differences of qual-
ity . . .
The substance of this discussion confirms a principle first an-
nounced by Aristotle and restated by a great jurist, Justice
Holmes, who said that general principles by themselves never
decide specific or individual cases. We grant that nationalism is a
general expression of the right to self-determination and that
even in some of its problematic forms it cannot be excom-
municated. Nationalism is something like a children's disease, it
has to be gone through to be transcended, and like children's
diseases, the later in time a group acquires nationalism, the more
violent its form, especially if its aspirations have been repressed.
As a rationalist, I quite agree with Professor Litt that some
problems may be insoluble, but I am not prepared to resign
myself to the recognition of the problem as insoluble until we
apply as much creative intelligence as possible to its resolution.
I thought that Professor Jakobsen, whose experiences In the
Philippines I shared, would call our attention to some aspect
of this difficulty, because when I was young and naive, I always
assumed that Scandinavian countries would illustrate the road
by which nationalism could be transcended, but I think theirs
are certain events, even in the history of Scandinavian countries,
which show how difficult it is to develop a unified culture
which would be accepted as expressing the legitimate interests of
national groups.
I agree with Mr. Lowenthal when he says that you can't sub-
stitute the concept of federalism for that of nationalism. But I
wonder whether we shouldn't use our creative, rational powers
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Criticism and Discussion
to find a new conception of federalism. So far as our delibera-
tions have been descriptive, we have been weak in presenting
plans for possible action and organization. Nobody has spoken
about nationalism in America and the United States, but it pre-
sents an interesting illustration of how a culture can be developed
from the most plural and diverse origins ; the thirteen American
colonies were profoundly different in religion, to some extent
even in language, and with the immigration to the United States,
the great problem was to forge a nation. Now that nation was
forged with a conception that what was to unite people would
be a certain type of institution that would permit any quality of
difference so that no group would feel that what was legitimate
to them in terms of cultural values would be overridden. Now
there is some danger in that too, a conception of a melting-pot
in which all cultures would be dipped and then they would
emerge in some kind of shining quality undistinguishable from
each other. But that is a difficulty that can be met in terms of
indigenous procedures ; but particularly for Europe, Asia and
Africa, what I think we should now turn our attention to, is a
conception of a common administrative unit which does not
impose upon the sense of uniqueness that each national group
feels.
ALBERT HOURANI: . . . there cannot be a philosophy of the
nation . . .
I should like to correct a misunderstanding of my position which
Mr. Naraghi put forward when he interpreted me as saying that
certain aspects of Asian and specifically of Middle Eastern
nationalism were rationalistic. My thought was rather the oppo-
site and I think everything that has been said rather confirms it.
I am more ?nd more convinced that one can say nothing about
nationalism in itself, because it is not a concept. Essentially,
nationalism Is a feeling of solidarity and natural attraction
which binds certain people together. Other people's nationalism
is as incomprehensible, and even as absurd as other people's
love.
But the moral neutrality of nationalism is precisely its moral
danger. The differences between nationalisms of today and the
sentimental tribal solidarity of the past is that, for various social
and technical necessities, today we have to encourage nation-
136
Criticism and Discussion
alism, to formulate It articulately, to instil It In people's minds.
We do this by putting It In words, that is to say by grafting on to
it certain concepts which have essentially nothing to do with it,
and this nationalism Is not Itself a concept allowing a systematic
development, since there cannot strictly be a philosophy of the
nation. It lies open equally to all Ideals, whether Ideals of the
rights of man, Ideals of religion and so on. It might be thought
that this, as Professor Hook said, is only a passing phase,
that once nations have achieved their independence, they will
recover from the child's disease of nationalism and will be able
to think about something else. I don't myself believe that this Is
so, because I think that there still are, in the present world, for
Independent national States, problems for which it Is necessary
and natural to try to generate a feeling of national unity and
loyalty.
HERBERT LUTHY: . . . nationalistic falsification of history . . .
The chief result of this discussion has been to show that nation-
alism cannot be defined, but that it can very well be mobilized
and very easily be put to ill use, precisely because it cannot be
defined. This was expressed in the papers Including, as I was
reminded, my own because of course everyone speaks in the
light of his own background, his own experience, his own world.
Before this discussion someone told me that in my paper the
Swiss schoolmaster disappeared. I don't deny it, I quite agree ;
and it is doubly true. For one thing the schoolmaster, or rather
the historian has done so, because to me a century of nation-
alistic writing of history to serve the purpose of national inte-
gration a century of nationalistic writing of history, falsifica-
tion of history, blurring of history constitutes something so
horrible that it often makes me feel guilty about my profession.
Secondly, schoolmasters have been one of the chief instruments
of nationalism in Europe, and Swiss schoolmasters, of course,
because it is true that we are a State that arose in a pre-nation-
alistic period, and in which what Madame Jeanne Hersch has
defined as the female type of nationalism, which I would call
simply a feeling of directly belonging to a small community in
one's own land, to the community one knows and works with,
the original, genuine community feeling has survived the
nationalistic epoch. We live on an island, which has probably
137
Criticism and Discussion
intensified our awareness of the extent to which the wide-scale
nationalism of the nineteenth century (I repeat, wide-scale not
by present-day standards, but by those of the period) was an
artificial ideology fabricated, of course, in the interests of
power-politics. From which it also follows that if we, in this
assembly, reject nationalism as a doctrine, as a principle of inte-
gration, that does not signify rejection of the right to existence
of separate communities, but the recognition of that right for all
of them. That is the meaning of federalism. And though Pro-
fessor Geyl thought he was contradicting me, I was almost
tempted to embrace him, because what he calls nationalism
the right to existence of the Flemish language and the Flemish
people is what 1 would call separatism or autonomism, the
preliminary requisite for which is, precisely, a federative, plural-
istic organization for coexistence which of course confirms the
destiny of Flemish nationalism as nationalism, but also gives an
example of the innumerable possibilities for the abuse of such a
movement, its use as a fifth column in international affairs.
WALTHER HOFER: . . . European colonialism and Soviet
imperialism . . .
We have spoken, in relation to nationalism, of the East Euro-
pean situation, of the situation in Asia and of the situation in
Africa. I would like to take the opportunity of this meeting, in
which so many distinguished men and women from all over the
world are participating, to call attention to a circumstance that
is quite obvious, but which has not been mentioned today the
fact that under the same international conditions in which the
African and Asian nations have succeeded in gaining their
freedom, the Eastern European nations have been compelled to
give up their freedom. In the light of psychology and history we
can well understand that, as it seems to me, a great number of
our friends in Asia and Africa hesitate to recognize a parallel
between European colonialism in their continents and Soviet
imperialism in Eastern Europe. But I think we should be
mistaken if we drew the conclusion from this, that the oppres-
sion of the East European nations which have come under the
Soviet yoke is not as terrible as that from which the Asian and
African peoples were suffering. I also believe that the sympathy
shown by the intellectuals in what is known as the Western
138
Criticism and Discussion
world has played and Is still playing a great, decisive role In
supporting the Independence movements among the African and
Asian peoples. And I would like to appeal to our friends, the
Asian and African Intellectuals, to do the same in their turn, by
encouraging their own countries not to forget those nations
which have lost their freedom at the very time when they them-
selves were winning It.
139
The Role of Religion in the
Pursuit of Freedom
KATHLEEN BLISS
ELIEF has its origins in belonging. We hold the beliefs we
share about man because we belong in the European
tradition. Can we accept articulately this belonging to
the whole of that tradition? To some of our contemporaries the
defeat of religion was the necessary prerequisite of man's intel-
lectual freedom and the rise of science. The clashes that took
place are to them the archetypes of an inevitable hostility. May
it not, however, be the case that belief needs the acids of criti-
cism and science the background of assured beliefs consciously
and responsibly accepted as such (namely as beliefs and not as
substitutes for science in its own sphere)? It is important for
Christians to accept what Bonhoeffer wrote in his book on
Ethics which he drafted in prison here in Berlin between 1943
and 1945, 'Intellectual honesty in all things including questions
of belief was the great achievement of emancipated reason and
it has ever since been one of the indispensable moral require-
ments of western man. Contempt for the age of rationalism is a
suspicious sign of failure to feel the need for truthfulness.*
What, therefore, we need to search for is not a device to help
man to continue to feel responsible or important, but the truth
about him as far as we are ever able, from within the human
situation, to discover it.
There seem to me to be two contributions at this point from
the side of religion. In the first place and negatively, Christianity
asks the question whether the secularized version of the Chris-
tian story, which puts man at the centre of man's concern, does
not deprive man of something he needs in order to be man
an object of worship of which he can use the subMmest words
141
Kathleen Bliss
without either lowering the meaning of the words or making a
God out of himself.
In the second place, I would suggest that the commonly felt
human objection to be nothing more than part of the natural
order, nothing more than an extremely complicated and sen-
sitive machine for reacting to our environment in the interests of
our survival, has its true explanation in the religious, and
supremely in the Christian, understanding of man. In the midst
of our life and activity we are visited by grace, that is by powers
of which we know we are not the authors. We hear and respond
to our calling. 'I can fully discover myself,' writes Gabriel
Marcel, ' only in so far as I respond to a call which comes to me
from beyond where I now am.' 1 am not left to make life mean-
ingful in the teeth of total meaninglessness, as Sartre would say.
'I find myself as I discover an inner bond with others in shared
ideas and shared feelings.'
I have already mentioned Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was the
son of a well-known German doctor and psychiatrist who
taught in the University of Berlin. He entered the Lutheran
Church as a pastor and after a period of study in America be-
came a theological teacher in Berlin. He became deeply dis-
turbed by the degree to which the churches, like the universities
and almost every other institution in Germany, were being
dragged along in passive acceptance of Nazi doctrines and
practices. After being forbidden to lecture in Berlin by the Nazis,
he withdrew to England where, as pastor of a German congre-
gation, he carried on his protest. He was soon recalled to
Germany to take charge of an emergency theological college
for the training of young ministers for the emerging ' confessing '
church which was forming in resistance. Here he wrote books
which were widely discussed in Germany and helped to draw a
wide circle of Christians into steady resistance to the Nazis.
Through his brother-in-law, Bonhoeffer had contacts with the
German generals who later plotted an attack on Hitler's life.
When war broke out in 1939, he was in the United States and
was begged to stay. He decided to return and throw himself
into the work of the confessing church. He was forbidden to
lecture, preach, write or remain in Berlin. But the confessing
church grew in strength. Meanwhile the same stirrings were
taking place in the Roman Catholic Church. Helmuth von
Moltke was adviser to the German supreme command on inter-
142
The Role of Religion in the Pursuit of Freedom
national law. As such he used the opportunities which came his
way to warn the Intended victims of the Nazis in occupied
countries, and many Jews owed their survival to him. In 1942 he
wrote to a friend in England, * It Is beginning to dawn on a not
too numerous, but active, part of the population not that they
have been misled, not that they are in for a hard time, not that
they might lose the war, but that what is being done Is sinful . . .
Perhaps you will remember that in discussions before the war I
used to maintain that belief in God was not essential for coining
to the results you arrive at. Today I know I was wrong, com-
pletely wrong. You know that I have fought the Nazis from the
first day, but the amount of risk and readiness for sacrifice which
is asked from us now require more than right principles, especi-
ally as we know that the success of our fight will probably mean
a total collapse as a national unit ! ' Von Moltke was arrested,
tried and shot, along with a group of his friends. The chief
accusation against them w r as that they had 'discussed with
Jesuit priests and Protestant ministers the possibility of Nazi
collapse'. 'This gives us,' he wrote on the eve of Ms execution,
6 the inestimable advantage of being killed for something which
(a) we really have done and (b) is worth while.'
Bonhoeflfer spent almost two years in prison in Berlin, from
1943 to 1945, during which time he wrote the outline of a great
work on Ethics. He was hanged on April 9th. All Ms life he spent
in the pursuit of freedom, for himself and others. In his Ethics
he speaks of It as the life of a man who Is committed to * the
double bond with others and with God'. * Without this bond and
this freedom there is no responsibility,' he wrote. Among his last
papers, written as he was being carried from place to place with
other prisoners in front of the advancing armies of the Allies,
was a poem. 'Not a good poem', he wrote, 'but I'm no poet It
expresses my ideas.' It is called 'Stations on the Road to
Freedom'. It contains what any Christian would want to put
Into the concept of freedom ; the note of overcoming death.
Freedom demands first a body disciplined to obey your will,
since the secret of freedom is learned only by way of control.
Next, action : ' Bravely take hold of the real, not dallying with
what might be. Not in the flight of ideas but only In action is
freedom': but action is succeeded by suffering; the hands that
were active are bound; helpless and alone you see the end
of your deed and commit your freedom into the hand of God.
143
Kathleen Bliss
Finally, fi O death, cast off the chains and lay low the thick walls
of our mortal bodies and blinded souls that at last we may
behold what here we failed to see. O Freedom, long have we
sought thee in discipline and in action and in suffering. Dying
we behold thee now and see thee in the face of God.'
144
Christian Values and Freedom
JOSEPH PIEPER
IT is an undeniable fact that * religion' or, to be more precise,
the Churches and a number of individuals impelled by
strong religious convictions, have made a stand against
tyranny, whether in its National Socialist or its Bolshevik form,
and have been active in the cause of freedom (and not merely of
'religious* freedom). But I do not believe this indicates that the
opposition between out and out secular rationalism and liber-
alism on the one hand, and religion on the other, is based on a
misunderstanding which this experience justifies us in dismissing
once and for all. The general programme of our Congress
includes a statement that may be summed up as follows : 'Dur-
ing the eighteenth century religion was the arch-enemy of free-
dom ; but it proved to be a stronghold of resistance to tyranny
under the Third Reich.' That 'but' conveys astonishment. But I
see no reason for astonishment. One could say, with a little
exaggeration, that the reason for which religion was the enemy
of freedom in the eighteenth century and remains so, even
nowadays, from the point of view of liberal rationalism was
the very same reason that led religion (i.e. the Church and
certain strongly religious individuals) to resist government by
tyranny. This is an indication of the complexity of the problems
we have to tackle when we begin to inquire whether religion is a
help or a hindrance to the achievement of freedom.
It is true, of course, that both liberalism and Christianity have
fought for freedom. But it must be remembered that they did so
for very different reasons and with very different aims. And it is
about these differences that I would like to say a few words.
Mrs. Bliss was perfectly justified in quoting Count Helmuth
von Moltke in her paper. But I cannot recall any passage in Ms
letters which suggests that that noble man, who was actuated by
consciously Christian motives, ever offered resistance in defence
145
Joseph Pieper
of the idea of freedom', or that he fought and died in the speci-
fic cause of 'freedom'. The same can be said of many others who
rose up against tyranny because of their religious convictions.
Moreover, the official utterances of the Church make few
specific references to freedom. They say much more about truth,
about justice and injustice, about human dignity and the dis-
regard shown for it, about parents' right to bring up their
children as they think fit and so forth. They do, of course, call
for freedom as well. And of course Christians, like other people,
regard freedom as a fundamental, indispensable and indisput-
able right. No amount of talk will obliterate from the history of
Christianity certain shameful and terrible episodes such as the
Inquisition ; but it must be borne in mind that they were entirely
contrary to the theories of Christianity itself. Whereas the crimes
of the totalitarian regimes, whether National Socialist or Bol-
shevik, were the logical consequence of their own principles.
(St. Thomas Aquinas, who lived in the time of the Inquisition,
went so far as to say that those who thought it wrong to believe
in Christ were not allowed to believe in Mm ; and that it was
better for a man to die in a state of excommunication than to
disobey his own conscience.) But the 'concept of freedom' plays
a very different part in Christian doctrine from the one it plays
in the rationalistic and liberal view of the world. I do not think
any liberal would say there could be such a thing as too much
freedom ; he might not even admit that freedom could be mis-
used. Whereas Christians are very decidedly of that opinion.
There can never be too much justice, of course, and to speak
of a misuse of justice would be nonsense. But freedom can very
definitely be misused.
There is another difference, and to my mind an even more
important one, between Christian and liberal attitudes towards
freedom. In order to understand it, we must remember that the
6 idea' of freedom is one thing and the 'reality' of freedom is
another thing. One characteristic of the Christian view of free-
dom is, I believe, the conviction that in the history of mankind,
there are certain things that can become realities only on con-
dition that they are not specifically regarded and proclaimed as
'ideas'. There are obviously certain things to which we can
never attain if we expressly or even exclusively strive for them.
They come to us adventitiously, when we are expressly aiming at
something else. This is a theory that has other applications as
146
Christian Values and Freedom
well ; psychoanalysts have discovered, for example, that there is
no greater obstacle to mental health than the specific or exclu-
sive determination to become healthy and remain so ; in other
words, the expressly proclaimed 'Idea 5 of health Is an obstacle
to the 'reality' of health. On the subject of freedom, the general
programme of the Congress states that not all Ideas are con-
ducive to freedom, and tells us to examine every Idea from the
point of view of how far It safeguards or endangers freedom.
One might venture to say that the Idea of freedom Is Itself one of
the obstacles to the establishment of freedom. That is, of course,
an exaggerated statement, which could easily be misunderstood
and misinterpreted. But it is true, I think, to the extent that any-
one who fights for the establishment of freedom must fight,
first and foremost, for values which are determined by their
Inherent content (truth, justice, human dignity and so forth).
And this applies to the Christian or religious resistance to
tyranny of which we have documentary knowledge. I think the
part played by implicit aims in the fight for freedom even In the
'October' riots in Poland and In the Hungarian uprising
should not be underestimated. Paul Ignotus has told us here that
the Hungarian resistance fighters were Inspired largely by ' tradi-
tional 5 values. And in Hungary 'traditional 5 is probably synony-
mous with 'Christian'. Herbert Liithy, too, said that Poland
and Hungary were impelled not so much by nationalism as by
the determination to establish a 'just form of society ' ; this again
is obviously an inherent attitude.
It Is admittedly very difficult to the modem mind the essen-
tially difficult problem to discover the grounds for these
inherent values and aims, express agreement with which con-
stitutes, as I said just now, the true and perhaps the only
preliminary condition for the achievement of freedom. For in-
stance, authoritarian theory denies the rights of the individual,
which are rooted in human nature ; and that denial serves as the
motive for withholding freedom. I believe that in intellectual
discussions there is no way of reaching a solution except by
demolishing this argument in other words, by realizing (in the
first place) that there really is such a thing as human nature (a
point that is contested, for instance, in Sartre's existentialism ; he
declares that // rfy a pas de nature humaine), and (in the second
place) how and on what grounds this human nature confers on
each individual human being each partner in the human rao
147
Joseph Pieper
certain unalterable, absolutely binding rights. It seems to me
that it would be hard for anyone who cannot respond to this, to
justify the demand for freedom.
Several speakers in our discussion have deplored the fact that
people in * the West 9 , and especially university students, set little
store by the idea of freedom. I wonder whether this alarming
state of things may not be due to a failure to convince these
young people of the significance and fundamental binding force
of the inherent values on which the abstract concept of freedom
can alone be based.
To put it briefly, it seems to me that the contribution of
6 religion* to the achievement of freedom has taken two principal
forms. In the first place, it has given names to those inherent
values whose materialization brings freedom 'adventitiously*
In its train ; and in the second place it has supplied grounds and
justification for those same values, whose binding power derives
from a superhuman model.
148
KATHLEEN BLISS : . . . no return to the simplicities of ignor-
ance . . .
Insofar as religions have been explanations of natural pheno-
mena or ways of influencing natural events, they are bound to
yield place to scientific knowledge and practice. All religions
will in time encounter this adulthood of man. Now there seems
to me to be more than one way of assessing the situation that we
are in at present. It is often regarded as a long fought out battle
in which, either gradually, or by a series of rapid engagements,
religion has been expelled from one field after another ; and this
is seen as the heralding of the final defeat at the hands of an
advancing science and technology. Either the problems of
religion are solved in a different way, it is thought, or technology
makes them unnecessary. On this view of things the religious
person is the one who looks for gaps in human knowledge and
fills them up with god-shaped explanations ; or he is one who
claims for prayer, that perhaps it will sometimes work where
psychiatric treatment has failed ; or perhaps in the last resort
he is just someone who falls back on extra-sensory perception
as a support for religious belief. I believe there is another way of
evaluating this whole engagement leading to our present situa-
tion, namely that what has been happening has been not only
the liberation of the mind of man or the exploration of the
natural world, but also the liberation of religion itself. For
religion has, for centuries, been used to explain every individual
phenomenon. It lias been also, in the form of codes and taboos,
the social cement of many communities and it has always been in
danger of being dragged down by popular ignorance into the
world of superstition. All religions have had their prophets and
the struggle of the prophets have always been with popular and
debased forms of religion.
The task of the prophet is to recall man to religion in its high-
est form, an aspiration towards the love of the good and the
149
Criticism and Discussion
pursuit of It by hard endeavour. Now here perhaps we have to
raise the question of the role of the religious institutions, a great
stumbling block. Religious institutions always can be and fre-
quently are the rallying point of every kind of conservatism. But
I would also point out that without the religious institution, the
prophet is comparatively helpless, for it is through the institu-
tion that he builds a following for Ms ideas and sets them into
motion. The liberation of religion in the present situation seems
to me to be the release we have obtained from the necessity of
belonging to a society in which religion was stretched beyond its
limits to everything in life. We now see more clearly that faith
is a responsible act. This doesn't necessarily make it easier,
perhaps the reverse, but it does make it clearly what it is.
To be in any genuine sense a religious person in the modern
world demands, it seems to me, both intelligence and will.
There is no return to the past, to the simplicities of ignorance,
but there is an open possibility of reinstating our beliefs as those
things to which we articulately submit ourselves.
One problem has greatly exercised freedom-loving parents :
the upbringing of their children. It has been thought by many of
them, that in order to respect their freedom, they must be
brought up uncommitted in any ultimate belief. This has meant
that, willy-nilly, parents have passed to their children the idea
that commitment is somehow something to be avoided. We
want above all things our children to be free ; but it seems to me
that to give them a vision of commitment, which, when adult-
hood is achieved, can be rebelled against, is a finer and, in the
end, a more viable form of freedom in education, than a lack of
commitment to anything but lack of commitment.
RICHARD HENSMAN: . . . a counterpoise to the authority of the
State . . .
It often happens that when the convictions that we live by are
attacked or criticized by others we tend to get violently in-
volved. Such feelings are likely to be so violent as to break the
bounds of scholarly discussion and the taboo on religion today
which Dr. Bliss spoke about has a cause which we should note
at the outset : religious people have, in the past, not only been
conservative ; they have also very offensively interfered in the
lives of others. They have been among the chief enemies of
150
Criticism Discussion
personal liberty. I myself believe that in some cases, in certain
historical situations, a good dose of secularism and anticleri-
calism is a constructive and positive force in history and I believe
this is true of my own country Ceylon at the present mo-
ment.
What, insofar as progress in freedom is concerned, are the
present challenges and the present opportunities in the world as
a whole?
When we think of small groups of economically and politic-
ally privileged people, then we can afford to see the virtues of
moderation and rationality. But in the world as a whole, where
life is a struggle and where resources are adequate only for a
frugal and active life for all men, some men are tempted to live
luxuriously by exploiting others. In fact in the greater part of the
world the material pre-conditions of freedom don't exist.
We cannot discuss this subject without thinking about South
Africa or China or Eastern Africa, where life seems to move,
where much more fundamental issues of freedom are being
raised than in the more ordered, more stable societies that we
tend to talk about. Our main concern is with what religion
claims to do and with what it is demonstrably able to do. I think
the first point to be made about religious faith and I refer
specifically to Buddhism or Christianity is that it is offered as a
key to the emancipation of the self.
It is the essence of the higher religions that they define the
state of men's life, of irreligious life, shall we say, as a state of
ignorance about the fundamental facts of life and offer and
recommend as a way of life, a way to realization of the self, and
if we think of the personal life, of personal initiative, of personal
responsibility as related to this release of the self, emancipation
of the self, then here we have a clue, a pointer to what religion
proposes to offer for the life of man in society under all condi-
tions. My second point is that religion functions very often as
culture of a group, as something that holds a group together.
The authority which a religious group or religion offers, is some-
thing of a counterpoise to the authority of the community, the
authority of the State.
At its best religion testifies to values and standards which are
denied or ignored in society and in doing so it offers man a
choice, an authority which he can place against what could
be the very oppressive deadweight of the tradition of the
151
Criticism and Discussion
community or the law of the State, the power of the State. On
the other hand, of course, where you have religious hierarchies
which claim allegiance over the minds of people, you have the
situation which I referred to earlier: religion becomes an
oppressive force.
HELMUT GOLLWITZER: . . . This fortress of freedom . . .
The universal claim to certain basic rights, which is included
nowadays in the programmes of all governments, first arose
out of the Christian doctrine of equality. Observation of nature,
otherwise than as a branch of magic, originated with the
Christian release of the world from its chains, and the debunking
of magic.
The problem of reducing the tension between faith and know-
ledge has therefore a very different aspect within the Christian
tradition from what it will now have for the Asian and African
peoples with their own religions. One cannot foresee in what
development of thought that will take place.
At one time there was a general tendency to assume that
scientific and technical instruction would break up the historical
religions. Somebody once said : c By explaining to a Negro the
working of a modern rifle, you do more to divorce him from his
traditional heathen beliefs than through the preaching of all the
missionaries put together. '
In fact, the contrary seems to be true. Self-awareness, among
the Asian and African peoples, leads also to a strengthening of
the old religions; they become adjusted, partly through the
the incorporation of certain elements borrowed from Chris-
tianity such as the idea of loving one's neighbour. Christianity
is felt to be the real problem, the soil from which secularism,
materialism, Communism and so forth have sprung; but these
peoples also recognize that there is something essentially 'dif-
ferent' about Christianity, and to some extent they turn in the
opposite direction. In other words, I don't think Toynbee is
right in saying that we are entering upon a period of smoothing
out of the differences between the great world religions.
Mr. Hensman said that the value of religion was that it
helped us to realize our true selves, and that it maintained and
affirmed certain values which are denied or neglected in the
present social order. This would mean that in any case the
152
Criticism and Discussion
Christian faith has the task of serving as a refuge for the truths
that are forgotten or overlooked in each generation. But it
seems important to me that we should realize that a de-human-
izing influence can be exerted not only by want, hunger, slavery
and the other characteristics of earlier ages which may be
ultimately abolished in an affluent society. Affluence itself can be
just as de-humanizing. The Christian contribution should there-
fore consist of the ideas derived from Christianity the inalien-
able quality of man, the inviolability of conscience, the
precedence of the individual over the species, the eternal value of
the human soul I say those ideas derive from Christianity, but
someone may dispute this later on ; in any case they have a very
definite and, in my opinion, incomparable foundation in the
basic tenets of the Christian faith. When they are divorced from
the Christian faith and go into circulation as abstract ideas, they
gradually lose their strength. So they have to be perpetually
revived, and that is the responsibility of which Christians should
always be reminding one another, in a world in which they see
that certain ideas and categories of thought derived from the
Christian tradition are spreading all over the earth in such an
astounding way.
Anyone in the Communist world who is a Christian and the
same thing is very possibly true of Moslems, Buddhists and so
forth, but I can only speak for the Christians anyone in the
Communist world who is a Christian is at once placed in a
reserved area of freedom, in relation to the all-absorbing claims
of the official ideology. He is bent upon widening the gaps in the
ideological control system, upon recognition of the individual
conscience ; he indicts the conscience of the government officials,
he is bent upon promoting individual responsibility, upon mak-
ing the system less dogmatic and more human ; his only hope, in
earthly matters, is evolution, and he wishes to make an active
contribution to it. Christians have learnt from their faith the
conviction that man cannot be turned into an ant, even if the
totalitarian systems try to produce that result; Christians in
those countries no longer believe that; they themselves are a
proof of the contrary, and they receive further surprising proofs
of it every day.
The importance of religion in the fight for freedom lies in the
fact that it protects the innermost core of man from the influ-
ence of every human power. During the Third Reich a friend of
153
Criticism and Discussion
mine, a Bavarian parson, was visited by a peasant lad from his
parish, who since he last saw Mm had joined the S.S. The lad
explained that he was one of the guards of a concentration
camp. The parson remarked that terrible things were said of
such places, but the young man would not confide in him. And
then suddenly he launched Into another topic, saying that the
S.S. were demanding that he should leave the Church; and he
wanted the parson's opinion about that 'You've hardly been
Inside the church since you were confirmed.,' said the parson,
'so why do you feel any hesitation about leaving it altogether?'
To which the young man replied, 'Well, the way I look at it,
once they've got us outside the Church, they can do whatever
they like with us. 5 By which he presumably meant: 'This very
loose relationship to religion, my official membership of a con-
gregation., Is my last link with something higher than mankind,
something that protects me from falling utterly into the power
of men. ' So I feel that we should look with sympathy upon this
reserve of freedom, this fortress of freedom, into which religious-
minded people can withdraw even under a totalitarian system.
Inner freedom has often been contrasted with outward freedom,
as though it were a consolation that could make people Indiffer-
ent to outward freedom. But In fact, though Inner freedom Is
naturally a consolation for the loss of outward freedom, it Is also
an Incitement to fight for the cause of outward freedom.
JAYAPRAKASH NARAYAN: . . . the unconquerable spirit of
man . . .
I have not been, In my life, professing any particular religion,
but I have been concerned with both the question of freedom
and the essence of religion. It is obvious to me, though I am not
a student of religious history, that religions as they have been
practised have in many cases acted as obstacles to freedom.
I was bom into the Hindu religion and, traditionally, Hinduism
believes In caste and even in untouchability. That certainly is
denial of freedom, restriction of freedom. Any religion, I think,
which has a set of dogmas does restrict freedom of the mind,
freedom of thought. Any religion which Is based on organiza-
tion, rigid organization, would necessarily restrict freedom.
Any religion which would create a sort of hierarchy of religious
beliefs would again limit freedom. At the same time, when I
154
Criticism and Discussion
think of some of the highest concerns of Hinduism, which ate
freedom of the individual from al attachment, freedom from
desires, freedom from the cycle of birth and death, then 1 think
of Hinduism as a great liberating force. The Islamic religion or
Christian religion speaks of the fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of men. That concept, if it is a religious concept,
would again be a great force in the cause of freedom.
If all human beings are brothers, then no brother can deny or
should deny freedom to another and that freedom will include
all kinds of freedoms. Again, the way of love that Christ
preached or the way of compassion that the Buddha preached,
seem to me to be at the root of every kind of human freedom,
material or spiritual. Therefore I should say that it is not easy to
deal with the subject unless we are clear as to the terms we are
using. In our struggle for freedom, for instance, in the Indian
struggle for freedom, religion played a great role because it
teaches the indestructibility of the human soul and those who
were encouraged to participate in the freedom struggle were to
be fortified by the belief that whatever the British did to them,
they were indestructible and in that faith they became better
fighters for freedom. Having won freedom it is quite possible
that, as is happening in India, religion is used to oppress people.
I cannot admit a religion that can divide human beings. Religion
should be a uniting force. But the religions that exist today do
divide the human family and I think this age of science and
technology does demand a religion which would embrace the
human race ; the human beings lived far from one another, now
they have been brought together into a small neighbourhood
and any religion that acts as a barrier between them is, I think,
an outdated institution.
I am not sure, in fact I doubt it very much, whether science
alone can provide an adequate philosophy of life. I do feel that,
if one is to fight for human freedom in all its forms, whether it is
freedom from hunger or freedom of thoughts, freedom of the
spirit, we have to go beyond science. We have often talked, I
have myself talked about the unconquerable spirit of man, I
don't know if science gives an evidence of this unconquerable
spirit of man, but I have said it and I believe in it desperately,
because if I give up that belief then I reaEy become desperate
about the future of the human race. I believe in this spirit of man
and I do not think that this spirit would allow him to remain
L 155
Criticism and Discussion
under oppression or would allow Mm to continue, as a human
being. Now what is this spirit and how are we going to define it
in secular terms, I do not know. This might bring us very near to
religion, but even if we do not use the term I do not think that
we can do without faith in this human spirit which seems to me
beyond science and technology, beyond anthropology and
sociology and psychology. It is this belief in the human spirit
that really guarantees freedom, not only for today, but for
always. Without this I do not think that it would be possible for
us, rationally, to argue against the commissars and the planners
and all those who are trying to give us the good things of our
life.
SIDNEY HOOK: ...the legacy of Kant andFeuerbach . . *
I shall take my point of departure from a remark made by my
good friend Narayan when he said that he does not think that
we could rationally justify our struggle for freedom unless we
believe in the human spirit. I think I believe in the human spirit
but it doesn't commit me to a belief in the existence of the soul
which is a very disputed matter, and depends upon considera-
tions not pertinent to the struggle of freedom. If we want to
have a rational approach to this question, there are certain
fundamental and perhaps elementary questions that one must
ask oneself. Almost all of the speakers admitted that historically
religion has often been opposed to freedom and quite specific
freedoms, not general freedom in the way in which Professor
Pieper discussed it, but freedom of inquiry, freedom of artistic
expression, the kinds of freedoms which the Congress for
Cultural Freedom believes in and wants to see expanded in the
world. Now, if it is admitted that historically religion has often
been opposed to freedom and if we say with Mr. Narayan that
true religion ought to do this or that, isn't it obvious that the
fundamental criterion becomes an ethical one and that you
judge religion as acceptable or not acceptable, as good or bad,
in terms of a criterion which cannot be derived from any
religion since, by your own admission, the very same religion
that you appeal to has in the past been used as historical justi-
fication for the caste system and discrimination. Now this, I
think, is of tremendous importance because it raises the whole
question of the relevance of religion to the struggle for freedom.
156
Criticism and Discussion
We know that Christianity never condemned slavery in prin-
ciple, never condemned feudalism and that the first liberation
movements were derived from the rationalist strain and
stoicism. But I want to leave the historical evidence ; sometimes
religious movements have played a progressive role, sometimes
they have not. It seems odd that in Berlin and in Germany, the
legacy of Kant and the discoveries of Feuerbach are ignored. I
come to the main analytical point : I ask the question of all of the
speakers, who have shared the same generic point of view : show
me specifically how you derive any concrete freedom from any
theological or religious proposition? Of course if you are going
to define religion in terms of passion or feeling, then everybody
is religious unless he is half dead. But if you say that freedom
depends upon the belief in the brotherhood of men and in the
fatherhood of God, how do you get from the fatherhood of God
to any particular, concrete freedom in this world? Because what
is true for freedom, I should argue, is true for truth. The concept
of truth cannot be derived from religion, because the validity of
religion depends upon the acceptance of the value of truth.
After all it was Paul who said : 6 All men are equal in the sight
of the Lord, whether bound or free/ which indicates quite
definitely for Paul and many who followed Mm that from the
proposition that all men are equal in the sight of the Lord, it
does not follow that they should be equal in the sight of the law
or equal in some social respect. Not only India but the whole
tradition of the West, up to modern times, indicated that one
could be a good Christian believing in inequality, in other words
that the belief in the fatherhood of God is compatible with any
kind of a social system. And if someone tells me that this was a
fallacy on the part of Christians in the past, I should answer that
it is a little doubtful whether we can, for example, raise ques-
tions about the validity of the Christianity of Thomas Aquinas,
who defends the death sentence, something which our Congress
is opposed to. Consequently, the problem is to show the logical
connection which is presumed to exist between religion and the
struggle for freedom. I think that this connection must be estab-
lished even if it were psychologically true that under some cir-
cumstances a belief in religion might inspire a belief in or a
movement towards freedom. I submit that if we try to organize
a struggle for freedom on the basis of religion, we divide our
forces; sooner or later the question arises what is the true
157
Criticism and Discussion
religion? Sooner or later we have to ask ourselves whether we
can reconcile the different religions of the world.
INGEMAR HEDENIUS: . . . the believer and the free thinker . .
The assumption that a logical relationship exists between
religious beliefs and the belief in duty can only mean that I am
being illogical if I say 'This is my duty, I am absolutely certain
of that, but I doubt the existence of God, life after death, and so
forth'. Whereas it seems to me that there is nothing at all illog-
ical about asserting the one point about duty and denying,
or expressing doubt about, the other. In my opinion, however,
the question of logic is not interesting. There are other and more
interesting questions that arise in this connection, such as
psychological questions. For instance, does the believer in
reMgion consider it necessary to be an ethical idealist I mean,
not only to talk like one, but to live like one as well? And it is
perfectly clear that this psychological connection does not
exist. So faith, in this sense, cannot be a necessary condition for
ethical idealism as is obvious from the fact that many free
thinkers have proved themselves to be ethical idealists. Religious
faith may of course be part of the basis for ethical idealism.
And that, I think, is true, but it is only a platitude. There must
be other contributory circumstances in addition to religious
belief, such as courage, a certain zeal, the capacity not to be
always thinking solely of one's own life, etc. In those circum-
stances religious belief may act as a powerful stimulus for
ethical idealism. But the same can be said of agnostics and free
thinkers, even of atheists. It obviously takes something more
than agnosticism and atheism and so forth to make an ethical
idealist. But the free thinker's conviction that we cannot hope
for God's help in this life, or look forward to a future life, can
also act as a powerful stimulus to ethical idealism. For it then
becomes all the more necessary for us to make efforts on our own
behalf, and that is a stimulus, too. In this sense, the believer and
the free thinker are on the same footing. Neither has a mono-
poly of ethical idealism, both have equal rights in the matter.
KARL LOEWITH: . . . only freedom can make us true , . .
Dr. Bliss's paper did not convince me personally that the
Christian belief, the injunction to love one's neighbour in the
158
Criticism and Discussion
Christian sense, has any essential connection with the "Pursuit of
Freedom \ as it Is called in the title. At any rate, not In the sense
In which the Word "freedom' is used in the American Declara-
tion of Independence and In the French Declaration of Human
Rights. I see no connection between the Christian claim that the
cross takes upon it the suffering of the poor and humble, and
what Is known as secular materialism, the aim of which is to
improve the lot of mankind through worldly means, redeem
mankind through its own strength, and which consequently
relies on the progress of science and technology. Christian
freedom this was implicit In what Mr. Gollwitzer said, too
is in essence a freedom from the world and all things worldly,
and It presumably makes no fundamental difference to the
believer in Christianity whether he is living in a totalitarian
State or in a liberal democracy. And the statement that all men
are equal. In the Christian sense, means only that they are equal
in the sight of God not before the law and among men, as
men. But if we set aside this religious aspect, everything becomes
different ; what Christianity designates as c sin' Is seen as evil that
will be got rid of by progress ; the statement in the New Testa-
ment that only truth can make us free is reversed and becomes
the statement that only freedom can make us true. 'Freedom
from want, Ignorance, disease, fear' is not a basic tenet of
Christianity. I do not mean to suggest by all this that Christian
freedom from worldly things cannot have constructive results,
even in the worldly dealings of a Christian. It does, of course,
have such results, as Mr. Gollwitzer's own observations indi-
cate ; but the preliminary condition for this Christian capacity
to resist the so-called * historical moment' is that, because of his
faith, the Christian can stand aloof from other matters, in a way
that is usually not possible for the non-believer.
Either we believe in science, in which case science must be
allowed to have its say about human nature, or we turn to the
New Testament for the answer to the question 'What is man 5
and the answer we shall find there will not be the product of
scientific reflection. I think it is essential for us to give up trying
to find a more precise definition of what freedom is, or of the
meaning attributed to It here; otherwise we shall be led into
completely arbitrary inferences.
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Criticism and Discussion
ENZO BOERI : . . . ignoramus et ignorabimus . . .
The Christian Church has opposed scientific inquiry from
the very beginning, from the time of Galileo. It opposed all
discoveries of geology and in the last century, all the discoveries
of evolution. In a certain way, many of our discoveries which
have led to the present civilization are more in the line of the pre-
Christian than in the line of Christian tradition.
If I look from a more parochial point of view, in my country
Italy religion is a very evident limitation to freedom. For
instance, in our country former priests cannot teach in the
schools, divorce cannot be legally obtained. If we look at the
present religions in the world, be it the Christian, the Asian
religions, the Jewish, any of them, they are all bound to pri-
vileges, to conservative positions, they have proved false in
many occasions where they had to oppose with scientific
thought. Nevertheless, we can well admit that there is an intrin-
sic religiousness of man and that some of the psychological
problems of the present civilization are precisely due to the
inadequateness of any religion in contrast with the intrinsic
religiousness of man. Now what can be the way out of the
present situation is very difficult to say. I should say that the
most important thing is of course ethical code and, as for
the problem of God, one hundred years ago a physiologist in
this town said 'ignoramus et ignorabimus 5 and probably it is
not the time to say 'ignoramus et non ignorabimus'.
ROBERT OPPENHEIMER: . . .freedom as an attribute of human
life . . .
I have only something quite brief to say but it is addressed to
Mr. Hook's plea that the Congress does not allow differences of
attitude towards religion to interfere with its fundamental agree-
ment on freedom. I cannot hear Professor Pieper or Mrs. Bliss
speak without the deepest appreciation and admiration and I
find myself close to what Mr. Narayan said. I think that it is
true that we will never derive the great commitments of human
life in an unambiguous way from religious doctrines. In a
certain sense, they were not meant for that and I share Mr.
Hook's despair when he attempts to do this. I do think, though,
that there is an intermediate ground where we do have work to
160
Criticism and Discussion
do and that is In enlarging our agreement as to what we mean by
freedom and what we hope for from it. When we mean freedom
from tyranny, I think we are all in a simple, straight agreement
and we are not very far from the things that we wish to see an
end to. But when we talk of freedom as an attribute of human
life, as something which we could hope would still be discussed
a hundred years from now, we will, I think, share Professor
Pieper's view that not all the good things in human life result
from being aimed at; many are by-products and a discussion of
the ways in which we would like to see the human spirit grow,
is to my mind very much in order for the Congress for Cultural
Freedom. To this those who are religious will bring a great deal
and those who are agnostic will bring something too.
ALEX WEISSBERG : . . . a totalitarian system of belief . . .
Professor Pieper quite rightly differentiates between brutality
resulting from actual theories, and brutality resulting from the
misapplication of those theories. But in practice I think he is
wrong in two respects the case of the Christian Church and the
case of Bolshevism. We can assume that Nazi totalitarianism
acted in conformity with its theories. Everything that developed
in course of time was latent in the ideas concerning race, the
idea of the Herrenvolk, the maxim that 'whatever serves my
nation is good and true'. But with Bolshevism it was different
The cradle of Communism was watched over by a deeply
humanitarian idea, and the assault on freedom was committed
only gradually and much against the will and against the feelings
of the earliest Bolsheviks. Lenin believed that after three months
of dictatorship people would realize that the Communists were
right, and then there would be boundless, anarchical freedom.
On the other hand, Pieper rather overshot the mark when he
tried to clear Christianity from the obloquy of the Inquisition.
We need not blame the Church for the excesses of the Borgias,
for those were unchristian ; but the attempt to create a totali-
tarian system of belief and admit of no division in it, right up
to the Reformation, is entirely compatible with the basic tenets
of the Christian Church. And in both cases the reason was the
same : anyone who uses force in order to put over ideas that the
majority of people don't want, or no longer want, must neces-
sarily end by violating freedom. If Lenin's views had ever been
161
Criticism and Discussion
in harmony with the wishes of the great mass of the Russian
people, those excesses would never have occurred. If, like the
Church in the old days, a leader finds he can preserve the sys-
tem not only the system of power, but the way of looking at
things only by an assault on other people, then he commits the
assault. When I came back from Russia and described how
millions of people were being thrown into prison as profiteers
and counter-revolutionaries, and that there was no kind of
counter-revolutionary organization, that nothing of all that
existed, people in England wouldn't believe me at first. So I said
to them : Now look, in the course of three centuries in Germany,
about 900,000 witches and wizards were burnt at the stake, but
as we know nowadays there were no witches just as there are
no Trotskyites in Russia today. Later an English friend said to
me, 'You're wrong, there were witches.' When I asked what he
meant, he said : 'Not objectively, of course ; because when those
women believed they could make the milk go sour or set the
crops on fire, they couldn't really do it. But they thought they
could, and in that sense they formed an organization that people
could join. So people who had turned to God and got nothing
out of it might perhaps try the devil ; and that meant just as
dangerous competition for the Christian Church as heresy did,
and that is why the full force of the totalitarian machinery of the
Inquisition was directed against those alleged witches.' So we
see that when a totalitarian power wants to maintain a system
of thought or a system of power that runs counter to the true
interests, or even merely to the opinions of the majority, it is
compelled to use brute force.
RONALD SEGAL: . . . entrenched, organized religion . . .
I think that the speaker I heard defending the encouragement to
freedom given by Christianity, on the other side of the Iron
Curtain, would do well to consider what entrenched, organized
religion is doing in the Union of South Africa where the Dutch
Reformed Church, the nearest we have to an established church,
is in fact peddling all the doctrines, all the dogmas of the repres-
sion. It is with considerable dismay that I have to report that
one of the manifestations of political resistance in the Union
today is now the burning of churches within African areas, and
the burning not of Dutch reformed churches, but the burning of
162
Criticism and Discussion
Anglican churches and the burning of Catholic churches. Now,
Mr. Chairman, this is a turning from religion that is not a re-
gression towards tribalism which is the policy of the government
itself, it is a running away from organized religion as the
adverse side and the running away not from one sect but from
all sects. It is perfectly true that on occasions other Christian
sects in South Africa have opposed the peculiarly bratai stand
taken by the Dutch Reformed Church, but the church of the
province, which is the Anglican church in the Union, pays
different stipends to white and to black, and within all the
organized churches with European, American, international
counterparts the senior hierarchy is entirely white. I have heard
a great deal about the doctrine of love, the doctrine of com-
passion. In a society where it has been shown conclusively that
compassion does not influence events, in a society where it
appears increasingly every day that violence can only be met by
some form of counter-violence, what stand can organized relig-
ion take? In a situation like in South Africa there is no religion
at the moment in existence, no organized religion that can
supply any of the answers to the very real problems that exist
within a race-crazy society.
HUGH SETON- WATSON: . . . a certain intolerance of the anti-
clerical . . .
In Ms Origins of Totalitarian Democracy Professor Talmon
stressed the difference between intolerance and oppression in the
name of something which is related to another life and intoler-
ance in relation to the present world ; the point that Talmon
made was that when belief in another life ceased to operate, this
led to an increase of intolerance, because once you believe that
perfection can be achieved in this world, you have a duty to
carry out this perfecting by any means available because the
reckoning was not left to the next world but was here on this
earth. And this led to a kind of intensification of oppression and
intolerance. Now, I think there is something here, there is a
connection between the disappearance of religion and totali-
tarianism. I do not by that mean that secularists or unbelievers as
such are intolerant, but merely that the tendency towards intol-
erance and oppression and coercion of the mind and of the
body which is present to some extent in all societies, has had a
163
Criticism and Discussion
certain intensification as a result of the disintegration of religious
belief, and the only reason why I want to mention this is to
suggest that the argument isn't surely between those who say
that you must be a believer in order to be in favour of freedom,
or that you must be an unbeliever to be in favour of freedom.
Surely we can stop this sort of sterile discussion which seems to
me at times to have a kind of undertone of what I can only call
old-fashioned nineteenth-century anti-clericalism. Of course
there are parts of the world, we all know, in which religious in-
tolerance is still very much in force ; certainly in Spain, perhaps
even in Italy, the power of the Church is still used to coerce
men's minds. But it seems to me that tyranny is tyranny whether
it is secularist or religious and we are against tyranny of either
kind. I think it is still a widespread view and I seem to get
echoes of it at times that there is something inherently tyran-
nical about religious belief. Now this seems to me to be utterly
wrong. There is a certain intolerance of the anti-clerical towards
religious belief as such which dates from the time in the eigh-
teenth century when oppression and coercion of men's minds
and bodies was in fact chiefly carried out by the Church and the
Inquisition. In fact, religious belief does not necessarily lead to
freedom but it does not necessarily lead to tyranny either.
164
Some Philosophical Remarks
Concerning the Contemporary World
JEANNE HERSCH
THE text proposed to us by Mr. Polanyl referred to the
'hollow man*. It is that 'hollow man* I would like to talk
about. For in my opinion this 'hollowness* constitutes a
very great danger to the defence of the Western world and to
what we mean here by 'freedom*. In his paper, Mr. Polanyi
drew attention to a sequence of historical transformation which
is important, but which is perhaps not the only one. I shall try to
add certain features to those he pointed out to us.
It seems to me that at the heart of the question there is the
radical disproportion, which colours our whole life nowadays,
between the existence that the present day allows us, as indi-
vidual human beings, and the tremendous power that is con-
ferred upon us anonymously. I would like to begin by pointing
out and commenting upon this disproportion.
It is a truism to say that science and technology have increased
a hundredfold the power of the human being. Man, as such, at
present wields a power beyond comparison greater than that
which he possessed only forty years ago. That power entails a
multiplication of our presence in the world, and a multiplication
of the world's presence with us through all the forms of infor-
mation available to us, and which thrust themselves upon us
whether we want it or not. For we are not free to take them or
leave them alone. Nowadays, when there is a famine anywhere
in the world, we hear about it, and we know approximately how
many victims it has caused; we can no longer remain ignorant
of it. The world is with us, as it were, in its entirety. And the fact
of knowing about things means that we automatically feel some
degree of responsibility for them. It seems to us that with the
165
Jeanne Hersch
power we possess as human beings, we could prevent certain
of the disasters that occur In the world, If we wanted to or If we
knew how to set about It. This increased power thus entaUs an
immense, perhaps exaggerated. Increase in our sense of respon-
sibility.
But at the same time our belief In progress has deserted us.
After experiencing Hitler, after the crimes of that recent period,
we believe we can attain to still greater power, we do not regard
this as an unmixed blessing, as a definite sign that history is
advancing along the right lines.
Moreover, at the very moment when Ms power and Ms
presence were being thus multiplied., the human being has seen
Ms specifically human qualities challenged as they had perhaps
never been before. What Kant calls die Menschheit im Menschen,
the humanity of man the factors that make a human being
human has been called in question, to an Increasing extent and
In an ever more fundamental manner, by the biological sciences,
and even more by the social sciences. These have striven, by a
variety of methods and means, to reduce to a minimum the
element in man wMch cannot be explained by casual relations,
definable In terms of biological or social conditions. They have
tried, as it were, to pare away man's irreducible core, in the
apparent hope that finally there would be nothing left of Mm.
Man would then be solely the product of Ms biological or social
antecedents, and the causal chains linking all the facts of the
universe would no longer be broken up by the effects of free will.
Science regards freedom as sometMng negative, a point of
non-explanation, a Matus in the explanation. And the present
moment Is a kind of anomaly in the time of which science makes
use a time in wMch nobody is In any specific position, and
which Is assumed to be continuous. Science has done its utmost
to get rid of the awkward exceptions constituted by freedom and
by the present moment, wMch refuse to fit into the continuity
that would make everything explicable. And the strange thing is
that the social sciences, in taking tMs course, believed they were
imitating the natural sciences, learning from them and In some
way widening their frontiers : whereas it seems to me that In
reality (I venture on tMs ground with great trepidation, especi-
ally considering some of those who are at present here) It
seems to me that on the contrary, by taking this line the social
sciences have drawn further and further away from what
166
Philosophical Remarks Concerning the Contemporary World
characterizes the natural sciences. For tie latter have striven
constantly for greater clarity in their methods ; their standards
of proof have been raised higher and higher and they have
grown increasingly cautious in the interpretation of their results,
their discoveries. Whereas the social sciences have been remark-
able chiefly for the wide scope of the laws they laid down ; the
nice thing about these ail-embracing laws being that they defied
proof. In the natural sciences, the wider the application of a
Iaw 5 the more it requires to be proved ; but in the field of social
science, the wider the application of a law, the less the possibility
of proving it. Generalization is here a definite convenience and
one which the social sciences hardly ever seem to have resisted.
There has also been a trend which I might call existential.
Perhaps driven to bay by the sciences which told him what he
was and at the same time whittled away his essence as a free
subject, man has, as it were, withdrawn from his explicable
characteristics, those whose origin could be traced, and has
concentrated more and more on the search for Ms irreducible
self, the self belonging to him and to nobody else.
For instance, the nature of the individual was at one time
determined by his birth. The term 'blue blood 5 , as applied to the
aristocrat, was not simply a metaphor ; it meant that the very
nature of the aristocrat differed from that of other people ; and
when a man was said to be an aristocrat the verb 'to be' had a
very positive meaning. It meant that the property of being an
aristocrat could not be removed from that man, that the fact of
being one constituted Ms essential self, was an inseparable part
of Mm.
Similarly^ a man's function was an inseparable part of Ms
nature; so that he had various attributes wMch clung to Ms
nature, adhered to it, made part of it and combined to form it.
King Lear, once he ceased to be a king, ceased to exist ; whereas
nowadays we have a whole crowd of dethroned kings who still
exist. Even the function of royalty seems to us to survive without
a peg to hang on ; and the same applies to almost all functions,
except perhaps that of the priest and within the army itself,,
at any rate that of the military officer.
It is the same tMng with social class. In spite of what we are
told to the contrary, the individual feels that his inner essence is
sometMng that transcends Ms class, and he tries to assert himself
above and beyond Ms class, and finally comes to ignore it. It is
167
Jeanne Hersch
the same, again, with family status. A father, for instance, is a
man who happens to have a son. He is not essentially a father,,
someone who deserves respect, whatever he does, merely owing
to his being a father. Tradition, even, is regarded as capable of
effecting changes in the self, but not as being a substantial
element of it. Self is something more than character, too
character seems to be only a contingent aspect of it.
This movement of withdrawal, by which the human being
tries to grasp, by elimination, what is entirely essential and
unique in Mm, his real self, has the ultimate effect of reducing
that real self to a kind of abstract point, to the bare discontin-
uity of the passing moment, to the abstract inclusion of freedom
in the causal chains I mentioned just now. We might quote here,
with a different connotation, what Kipling says about the crab :
*"I am I" says the crab, "myself and nothing else 9 " (not the
exact words, of course they're in one of the 6 Just-So Stories')
and recall Sartre's words, 'I am nothing.' Nothing that is to
say, a break in the opaqueness of being.
Needless to say, this withdrawal of the * self* automatically
does away with the firm foundation on which society could build
in former times, and which derived from the substantial, incor-
porated nature of the symbols on which human relationships
were based. Those symbols were part and parcel of the person
and its social relations, they were very little affected by the
virtues, sentiments or necessarily shifting loyalties of indi-
viduals. They were supplied, as it were, both subjectively and
objectively, at the same time as the social connections.
Now that this firm foundation has disappeared, we are con-
fronted by a new situation. Either we must accept instability
and capricious change, or we must resist, taking refuge in an
impassioned moralism to which Mr. Polanyi referred the other
day in a different context. From now on, in fact, the only prop
for stability is the actual existence of the individual who takes a
particular set of social connections as part of his life. The con-
nections no longer hold by themselves, they depend on certain
individuals.
Take the marriage bond, for example : so long as it is a sacra-
ment, it is unaffected by anything that those who are connected
by it may subsequently feel, think, experience or even wish;
once it becomes personal it depends on the continuity of feeling
of those individuals and on their behaviour. Personal freedom,
168
Philosophical Remarks Concerning the Contemporary World
when It withdraws out of any and every context In order to
'purify' itself and become "Inward 9 to the maximum degree,
transforms aU connections into something inward and personal.
After that, any connection between persons Is conditioned by
the inner being of those persons.
It thus acquires a different and perhaps much greater value.
It is not my Intention here to weigh one against the other. But it
is clear that once a connection withdraws inward, it Immediately
and inevitably becomes very fragile. The standard of morality
based on firmly established precepts disappears, to be replaced
(as can be very clearly seen, for instance, in recent French litera-
ture) by a single, very ill-defined value, which not only varies
from one person to another, but may even fluctuate during the
lifetime of a particular person : a certain demand for sincerity
and authenticity.
The question then arises as to whether man can stand up to
this kind of freedom, whether he can carry a burden so heavy.
And is It to be hoped that society can be held together with that
kind of freedom as Its sole support? I think It should at any rate
be realized that such freedom is something extremely difficult
to take on. You remember the passage in Dostoievsky where the
Grand Inquisitor declares that freedom is the most terrible gift
ever bestowed on man; and it seems to me that this partly
accounts for the lure of totalitarianism.
Please do not misunderstand me : I am not trying to defend
one or the other way of being, or to censure either of them. But
it seems to me that in the last forty years (though it would be
easy to point to some far more remote periods) men have tried
to take upon themselves a freedom, the risks and Implications of
which they failed to perceive beforehand. And then, as always
happens, we were faced with the consequences, by life and by
the facts.
I will turn now to another point. Now that, thanks to scienti-
fic and technical progress, man is no longer afraid of nature
having tamed the phenomena of nature he has come to be
afraid of another redoubtable nature that has risen up around
him of Ms fellow-man, of other men, of society, of history.
For present-day man it is society and history that constitute the
jungle, the unforeseeable, menacing, perilous territory. I think
there has been a displacement of fear, with very profound conse-
quences.
169
Jeanne Hersch
it is of course true that a network of security, lost at the
beginning of the industrial era, has been reconstructed on the
social level, chiefly owing to what is aptly known as 6 social
security'. But in my opinion the social security thus gained or
regained, by strengthening people's desire to keep their place in
the style of life and the environment where they can be sure of
having it, has made them even more subject to the greater, more
radical, lurking fear that threatens their whole security.
Man's relationship to history has become strangely equivocal
nowadays. It is a master-slave relationship which works both
ways and whose terms are interchangeable : history is the area of
power, where a man's capacities and intentions find scope and
Ms plans come to fruition ; but conversely, history is the modern
form of the doom that weighs down on him. Man enjoys history,
but at the same time he would rather play no part in it, he wants
to escape from it, he wants it to leave him in peace, to pass him
by. He feels it to be subject to his plans, in other words malle-
able, yet at the same time all-powerful, fateful.
The same ambiguity is to be found in his relationship with the
technological universe that now surrounds him, thanks to the
advance of science. Man makes use of it every day, at every
moment lie is continually using it, but without understanding
what he is using. He is in the midst of a world that is submissive,
but uncomprehended. So there revives, in the man of today, a
receptivity towards superstitions, a tendency to be influenced by
eschatological prospects and by escapist tendencies, and a vul-
nerability to immeasurable fears, which are in utter contrast to
the feeling of power that is awakening in him. Everything seems
possible, because hardly anything can be really understood.
And the astonishing thing is that for us, who live in this great
era of science, the part of the world that is really clear the part
we can all understand is, proportionately speaking, extremely
restricted.
Having become aware of history, willingly or unwillingly,
consciously or unconsciously, man has to try to find a meaning
for it. Attempts to do this are constantly being made on all
sides. In present circumstances a philosophy of history thus
seems to have become inevitable. On the other hand men, with
the exception of great scientists, are usually devoured by impa-
tience. They want to find the key at once, to know the last secret.
Man finds it intolerable not to be told. He does not realize that
170
Philosophical Remarks Concerning the Contemporary World
the refusal to tell Mm the last secret makes part of the infinitely
complex, fragile and precious balance which is among the com-
ponents of human freedom. He tMnks lie might know how it
ends and be free all the same or be even freer, because then he
would know what to do. This determination, this need, to dis-
cover the ultimate secret seems to me to be yet another factor
that favours totalitarian propaganda in our midst.
But though the sense of history has become so keen among all
our contemporaries (it is by no means the sole prerogative of the
Marxists) it does not necessarily lead to political activity. Here
we must realize something which is rather complicated but
which seems to me to be important. To speak of history and to
live 'historically' are two very different, in fact almost opposite,
things. In talking about history one takes history as a kind of
object, one holds it still in front of one. It is quite characteristic
to find that, for instance, a philosophy of history such as Marx-
ism gives us the term for it, thus transforming it into a thing, into
a form of history which lies outside history.
So what all of us today need to do is to find our proper place
between the meaning of history, our capacity for being present
within it, the sense of our powers and our helplessness ; all of
which is very difficult to practise and take upon ourselves, for it
is no mere theoretical result we have to achieve, nor is it a matter
of tracing boundaries for neighbouring provinces. I think the
question nowadays is not one of liking or disliking our time and
i^ characteristics, but of really re-establishing contact with our
time as it really is, with the possibilities it offers and the hope it
allows which is a different hope from that of other periods.
This means that instead of asking ourselves whether the
changes that have occurred are good or bad, we have to accept
them and ask ourselves what we can make out of them. Mass
media, mass culture and so forth are no longer things it rests
with us to maintain or get rid of. What does rest with us, is the
value we are to extract from them for the benefit of humanity.
But while criticism is easy, invention is difficult. And invention is
what is needed. Since these new media are there, we have to
invent new methods.
I think it would be amusing to take an example that lies close
at hand and say a few words about the methods of discussion in
a Congress such as ours. A Congress like this, discussions like
these, are also something new. We have assembled here from all
M 171
Jeanne Hersch
the corners of the world because facilities for travel have become
amazing, because we have microphones and simultaneous inter-
pretation, and because all this enables us to talk together. Now
it seems to me that such a meeting requires the invention of some
method of discussion which has not yet been introduced. If I
may make one or two suggestions, it seems to me that the first
condition is that all the participants, irrespective of their rank,
their qualifications, their past achievements, shall subordinate
themselves entirely, unreservedly and without the least vanity to
the interests of the progress of the discussion. That means recog-
nizing our Chairman as a kind of conductor of an orchestra,
whose baton we obey because it is he who has to ensure that the
discussion proceeds smoothly. Secondly, the list of speakers
should not be arranged according to the order in which they
have applied to speak, because then one speaker can never reply
to another, since each is always answering something said long
before. On the contrary, I think, specific themes should be put
up for discussion, and anything extraneous to the central theme
should be mercilessly quashed. In saying all this I am not criti-
cizing this particular Congress; all congresses are run in the
same way nowadays. But I think it is a waste of our opportuni-
ties for meeting and being present, by confining ourselves to a
long sequence of interventions, with no real debate, such as
could have been just as well circulated by the good old-fashioned
printing-press.
Another example: adult education. Here again, we must
invent methods of continuing the education of adults, whoever
they may be, whatever may be their occupation, throughout
their lives. Science is advancing so rapidly, the world is changing
so quickly, that it is nothing to have gone to school thirty or
fifty years ago. So it is absolutely indispensable to keep on going
to school throughout one's life. But that means inventing new
methods, specially devised methods, for each different category
of adults, so as to be able to start from what each of them does
and knows already.
Only education of this kind can and must provide the first
remedy for the absolutely crucial vice of the mass media, which
is that they abolish all spontaneous activity and replace it by
inert absorption. This, I think, is a fundamental problem. One
of the participants in this Congress said the other day that he
had learnt some most interesting things about the French
172
Philosophical Remarks Concerning the Contemporary World
abstract painter Manessler from a television programme. That
is excellent, and there are undoubtedly some good programmes
on television. But the question is whether, at the time of learning
about Manessier ? it was about Manessier that one wanted to
learn. The question is, where the personal interests of the
person watching television lie, and whether those interests
should be stimulated or, on the contrary, weakened or even
destroyed and replaced by a colourless apathy, a void to be
filled. It is essential that the impetus should continue to come
from people, not from the machines; so it is imperative to
intensify interest, and a selective faculty arising from that
interest. And this, too, requires new educational techniques.
My reason for running so quickly through these examples is
not that I consider them unimportant, but for lack of time, and
because I cannot resist making a few more suggestions, though
they are perhaps already too numerous and disjointed. Here is
another : I think we should prefer the workshop to the salon,
creativeness to finished perfection. Our generation has devel-
oped a worship of perfection, especially In art, which is on the
way to killing culture. It is a good thing for certain programmes
to be flawless, but there must be room left for practice, for
growth, for spontaneity as weE. When one eats fresh fruit one
always finds some bad ones in the lot. When you eat tinned
fruit you can be certain they will all be magnificent. But the
difference is the difference between what is fresh and what is
canned. And it is the same thing with culture. One must run the
risk of failure, in order to produce something that is alive.
What I mean by the salon is the place where you assemble
everything you consider perfect; what I mean by the workshop
is the place where one tries to make something, which may end
either in failure or success. We have to take the risk.
I would like to seize the chance, now that I have the floor, to
make a few more comments on the papers we have heard in the
last few days.
As to political and economic matters, there is only one thing I
want to say that we have to devise socialist and federalist
structures that will make possible that dispersion of power that
Mr. Narayan, for one, spoke of the other day in our socio-
logical study-group.
Concerning the religious question, I think that that, too, has
changed its aspect, in a world so profoundly transformed. And
173
Jeanne Hersch
I would like to point out, for one thing, that when people begin
to ask questions, as we have been doing here, about the possible
value of faith In a world such as that of today, either In a
country's development or In the education of its children, or for
the purposes of some other result which in Itself is excellent, It
means that, without realizing It, they are already opting against
faith. I do not want to go more fully into this idea, but I think
it is fundamental. One is not really talking about faith unless
one understands that.
Another point raised was whether religious faith was com-
patible with freedom. From the angle of freedom, and from a
standpoint outside faith, one can only judge religious institu-
tions. One may ask whether a particular religious institution
promotes freedom or militates against it. But one cannot ask
whether faith promotes freedom, because for those who have
faith, faith and freedom are one and the same thing.
Then I think that the distinction between the category of
'believers' and that of ' unbelievers ' is no longer as clear-cut as
it may have been in other epochs. I want to make it clear that I
am not trying to blur the outlines in order to bring everybody
into agreement. On the contrary, I realize that there are believers
and unbelievers. But I think that the quality has some resem-
blance to the 'uncertain halo' of which Schwarz-Bart speaks in
Le Dernier des Justes. Those of you who have read the novel will
remember that in the Levy family, whose story it relates, there
was one just man in each generation. But a time came when no
one was absolutely certain who he was. And Schwarz-Bart tells
us that from then on, In the Levy family, the halo became a kind
of question-mark, for no one was sure behind whose head it was
placed. This idea of a suspended halo expresses more or less
what I think about the distinction between believers and
unbelievers.
As long as we are dealing with the subject simply on the level
of external, theoretical discussion, the distinction is of little
consequence. But when it comes to freedom, I feel but this is
my personal conviction, which I offer, of course, for discussion
I feel that freedom loses its meaning once all species of trans-
cendence, that is to say, all species of reference to reality which
transcends the practical sphere, is abolished. I think that when
we reduce reality to mere immanence, history is reduced to a
technical composition. And to know what to do in a technical
174
Philosophical Remarks Concerning the Contemporary World
composition, one must be an engineer. So in that case it becomes
logical and sensible to entrust history to engineers. But I think
pure Immanence Is an error, and precisely for that reason there
are not and cannot be any engineers properly equipped to build
history. That is why and here I come back, after wandering so
far, to my original theme pure Immanence, in my opinion,
cancels out the actual, living present. It restores the objective
continuity of time, which Is nobody's time. It abolishes the
decisive link between a past which has occurred and a future
which is unknown the link constituted by the present moment,
that Instant In which freedom can live.
175
Criticism and Discussion
SIDNEY HOOK : . . . a naturalistic view of man . . .
The paper of Madame Hersch has an aesthetic quality which is
extremely attractive and I hesitate to raise certain difficulties of
an analytical character with it, but I am sure she would under-
stand that I feel I should do less than justice to her contribution
if I did not ask for more light. My first question is whether or not
she has distinguished clearly between different conceptions of
freedom which she uses interchangeably here and which makes
it very difficult for some of us to understand. She speaks of
freedom in one sense as opposed to determinism ; she identifies
freedom in some places with discontinuity, freedom with chance.
This is the old traditional question of freedom versus deter-
minism and I, for one, do not see its relevance at all to the second
conception of freedom, which is freedom from coercion, free-
dom from the arbitrary imposition of someone else's will. No
matter what theory one has about determinism, or about chance
and one can raise certain philosophical difficulties with the
view that has been taken in relation to that they are not rele-
vant to the question of the conditions under which human
beings can express what they desire; how to abolish tyranny
over the human mind. One can hold the same views of deter-
minism and come to different conclusions about the nature and
even the validity of coercion. If a man holds my hand and pre-
vents me from moving, he is coercing me ; if he lets me go, he is
not coercing me. Now in either case, those who accept the
postulate of determinism would say : the action is determined.
But the determinism of those actions does not bear upon the
question of whether a man should be coerced, of whether
we agree with Hobbes or whether we agree with Mill, both of
whom were determinists but who stood at opposite ends of the
political spectrum. And I find a third conception of freedom and
liberty here which I, for one, cannot connect with either one of
the other two ; in speaking of religious faith, Madame Hersch
177
Criticism and Discussion
tells us: 'Faith for those who have It is liberty.' Now this, of
course, sounds like a very arbitrary definition, but on what
conception can one derive a theory of liberty which Identifies it
with faith, with spontaneity and with freedom from coercion? I
think these three concepts are logically independent of each
other and do not shed light on the subject. Certainly Augustine
had faith, Paul had faith but I wouldn't say they have faith In
liberty in a sense In which we are fighting for liberty today ; a
man might have faith and still not believe in liberty. My second
point is one in which I can express a considerable and cordial
measure of agreement with Madame Hersch. She says that It is
necessary in our time to Invent new methods of education, new
methods of distributing power, new methods of creativity In life.
I thoroughly agree. I caH that the process of creative Intelli-
gence. But to do that, we have to bring to bear some of those
powers which I'm afraid have been criticized in terms of engin-
eering ; invention is very close to engineering. She seems to be
calling for a method of social engineering. Now, I don't like the
word 6 social engineering' because it Is a jest, implying that when
we deal with social affairs we are dealing with material that can
be assimilated to the things in the physical world and that we
are going to treat human beings as if they were so much cement
and metal and so on. But if we look away from that simplifica-
tion, the essence of the application of methods of creative Intelli-
gence is the extension of this scientific method which Is based,
if I understand the word, upon the immanence of man. Now I
should like to ask: Precisely why does it follow that if one
believes that man is immanent in nature one cannot believe in
liberty? Obviously man can believe in transcendence and deny
liberty. We might refer to the existentialist theologians who
continuate a long and venerable tradition and who tell us that
from the transcendental conception of man both good and evil
are equally Irrelevant. Kierkegaard, in Fear and Trembling, when
he discusses the Abraham-Isaac legend, calls attention to the
fact that a transcendental view must lead to what he calls a
suspension of the ethical. He says that from the standpoint of
the absolute and the transcendent, Abraham acts like a mur-
derer. But he maintains you cannot judge him, or if you judge
him from a moral point of view then you are not judging him
from a religious point of view. Karl Barth, his modern disciple,
tells us that God loves Stalin and Hitler just as much as he loves
178
Criticism and Discussion
their victims. Well, that tells us something about Karl Barth
perhaps more than about God. But it Is quite clear to me that
in the sense In which we are concerned with freedom from
coercion, which Is the basic political Issue, it has to be proven
and not merely asserted that one who takes a naturalistic view of
man on the basis of the only reliable knowledge that we have,
has no right to believe in freedom.
JEANNE HERSCH: . . .freedom experienced by the individual . . .
I will try to reply to Mr. Sidney Hook, but that is ex-
tremely difficult, because what he talked about was worlds apart
from what 1 tried to talk about. We both want more light, of
course ; but light Is not always what people Imagine It to be. And
sometimes there may be clarity in the foreground of certain
ideas, yet that very clarity may conceal the darkness that lies
behind. There is sometimes a screen of clarity that conceals the
truth. And it seems to me that the terms you use form a kind of
screen of clarity which conceals a sort of gaping void that lies
behind them, instead of shedding light on it. And those dark
depths are of great importance In our life. I will take your ques-
tions and do my best to answer them.
You began by saying that I ought to have drawn a distinction
between three types of freedom. the freedom that is spon-
taneity, the freedom that is absence of coercion, and the freedom
which, for the believer, is indistinguishable from faith. You
challenge me to explain in which of these three senses I was using
the word 'freedom*. The fact is that I wasn't using It in any of
those senses. I was speaking of freedom experienced. Freedom
observed as spontaneity, from outside, appears to be a choice ;
but that is not what I meant. I meant freedom as experienced
by the Individual, nothing else. Regarded from outside, such
freedom appears, I think, as an interruption in the deteraiinist
explanations. It is not experienced as such. Kant, of course, was
quite right in affirming that the determinists are perfectly en-
titled to investigate the new phenomenon which appears after
this break in continuity and try to reduce It by causal explana-
tions. That Is a perfectly legitimate undertaking, but it does not
get rid of the break in continuity, which is caused by the very
presence of freedom. I was in no way referring here to political
freedom, that is to say, to freedom as absence of coercion. I
179
Criticism and Discussion
assure you I often think of it. But today I took my stand on the
ground which in my opinion makes necessary, and justifies and
feeds, the struggle for the preservation of the form of freedom
which is constituted by the absence of coercion. On the political
plane, where freedom consists in the absence of coercion, it is
merely absence as you very rightly said. And one cannot fight
solely for an absence. So that absence must have a substantial
meaning somewhere or other. And that is what I tried to talk
about.
As for what I said about the believer's identification of faith
with freedom, you think that is an arbitrary definition. But it is
not a definition at all. It would be absurd to define freedom in
terms of faith, for the very good reason that there is no word
more difficult to define than 'faith'. All I said was (and without
giving it as my own view, because to do that would have been
to arrest the wandering halo I spoke of ; so I did not say that
for me faith and freedom were one and the same thing) that
for the believer who speaks from within his faith, the question
'Does faith contribute to freedom?' is meaningless, because he
regards the two as absolutely identical. Or rather, as one and the
same thing. That was all I said. And I cannot go further into it,
for the matter at issue is the situation of the believer, and it
seems to me that even he himself can hardly talk about it. You
raised the objection that in the case of St. Augustine faith did
not mean faith in freedom. I never said that faith necessarily
meant faith in freedom. I said that for those who have faith, the
heart of faith and the heart of freedom are one and the same
thing. That's all. One can, of course, have faith and not live in
freedom. But when one does not live in freedom, but has faith,
there probably remains a spark of freedom which is intangible,
and that is just what Socrates was referring to when he was
dying, for instance. And that is what all those who had faith
have referred to lashed to a post and declaring that all the
same, they were free. It would be an abominable sophistry, of
course, to make out that since, whatever happens, that ultimate
freedom remains intangible, there is no point in fighting for
freedom on the political level. That would be the worst of spiri-
tual operations, the worst abuse. But the possibility of such an
abuse does not prevent that last spark from having its meaning,
and perhaps even a meaning that carries all the others with it.
Referring to new methods, you said that invention is closely
180
Criticism and Discussion
related to engineering. I know so little about the world of
machines that I am almost afraid of talking about it. But it
seems to me that if engineering is closely related to invention, it
is precisely because it involves an element of invention which is
truly creative, not merely a change in the positions of manu-
factured parts. In that sense, it is true, it is the same thing. In so
far as invention plays a part in engineering (and it undoubtedly
does), they are the same thing. But the 'engineer 9 as I used the
word means someone who 5 as the Marxists put it, 4 holds the
key to history 9 . For such men history has no more mystery, no
more secrets ; their explanations exhaust its reality and conse-
quently exhaust the reality of man and his life. If anyone can
really master such knowledge, we need only leave it to him to
arrange things for the best, with no interference ; and it would
be unreasonable not to accept the domination of such an
engineer. But what I was talking about was the meaning, which
evades learning, science and technique and which in any case
already lies at the heart of science and technique, as part of the
reason why we prefer the true to the false. The preference for
truth as against falsehood is not scientific. It underlies science,
but it is not scientific. The impulse towards the truth is not
scientific. And in my opinion that irreducible root is indispen-
sable if we are to preserve the meaning and the place of freedom.
You asked me why I linked transcendence with freedom and
immanence with loss of freedom. As a matter of fact I have
already answered that point, because your third question is
more or less the same as your second, perhaps even as the first.
Because the same thing lies at the centre of all these questions,
doesn't it? You quoted, from Kierkegaard and from Earth, two
sentences which I agree seem particularly shocking at a first
glance. But I would be ready to take up the defence of those two
sentences, to make a commentary on them, and I think I could
justify them. For if we leave God his divine mystery and if we
leave the term 'love* the mysterious sense it takes on when
applied to God, the words 'God loves the Nazis as much as
their victims' is not only justified but indispensable. In any case
Karl Earth's past entitles him to write such things, for it rules out
any possible ambiguity.
181
Criticism and Discussion
RAJA RAO: . * . where is freedom if not in transcendency? . . .
I hate to remind you that I come of a civilization which has a
certain wisdom and a certain stability, so that we can speak with
a certain impartiality. For us in India, freedom means liberation
freedom is a process, liberation is its conclusion. The con-
clusion of what? Can one really be free when one still has a
body?
Mr. Hook spoke of physical coercion ; so it begins with the
physical world, the world where one has a body ; after that we
come to the psychological world, which is conditioned, as Mr.
Hook is conditioned, as we are all conditioned. So where is
freedom, if not in transcendency, of which faith is a kind of
popularization?
Freedom is the very heart of faith, which I will call the light
that irradiates faith that is what it is. I am in full agreement
with Madame Hersch, I think, in saying that unless human
beings can see themselves and see what Is the nature of true
freedom, which is transcendency, man will never be free.
I would like to ask Madame Hersch, is not the real question
in the West, that there is a real, metaphysical conflict between
antiquity and Christianity? I think that until that conflict is
settled you will always have philosophers, you will always have
nihilism.
JEANNE HERSCH: . . . there mil always be philosophers . . .
I would like to thank Mr. Rao. I think there is one extremely
important point on which I cannot agree with him. This is the
question of the body. He wonders how one can be free when one
has a body. I personally, as a good Westerner, would like to ask
how one can be free when one hasn't got a body. For me, one of
the characteristics of Western thought is that it is linked with the
body 'a soul in a body', as Rimbaud says. I don't know what
freedom without a body could be like. I don't say it doesn't
exist; but for me, it passes human understanding. That, of
course, leads to great divergence between your ideas and mine.
You said that so long as the conflict between antiquity and
Christianity continues, there will always be philosophers and
there will always be nihilism. I'm going to make a confession : I
hope there will always be philosophers and that there will
182
Criticism and Discussion
always be nihilism. For I hope there will always be faith and life,
and there can only be faith and life while there Is nihilism, and
philosophers, and problems, and dramas, and difficulties. And
it seems to me that the difficulties are due to the very fact that
the plane Mr. Hook spoke of the political plane, where free-
dom has to have elbow-room to exist without coercion is by
no means divided from the plane I myself spoke of. In my opin-
ion neither of those planes can exist without the other. And the
one on which I took my stand today in order to talk about
freedom becomes quite artificial unless it is also slanted towards
political action, in order to bring about on the social plane that
absence of coercion to which we have referred.
183
A Postscript
MICHAEL POLANYI
ON returning from his meeting with Krushchev, held over the
first week-end of June 1961, President Kennedy reported:
*The facts of the matter are that the Soviets and ourselves give
wholly different meanings to the same words : war, peace, de-
mocracy and popular will. We have wholly different views of right
and wrong and what is an internal affair and what is aggression.
And above all, we have wholly different concepts of where the
world is and where it is going.'
How did we get here and where do we go from here? This
was, in effect, the question I put to the meeting in Berlin, a year
earlier, by asking them to discuss my paper 'Beyond Nihilism*.
Confronted with this question, people think first of the impact
of industrialization. But sitting as we did in the Congress Hall
of Berlin, a few hundred yards from the Brandenburg Gate
which marks the frontier between the two halves of the world
dominated by the two different systems of ideas it was obvious
that their disparity would not be explained by differences in
industrial development. There is no great difference in this re-
spect on either side of the Brandenburg Gate, and what is more,
there is no difference in the degree or history of industrialization
of the * Federal Republic of Germany' under Adenauer and the
'German Democratic Republic' under Ulbricht. Industrializa-
tion may offer an opportunity for the spreading of new ideas,
but it neither produces them nor lends them power to convince
men.
The immediate reason for the dominance of distinctive ideas
all over the eastern zone of Germany is obviously the presence
of some twenty divisions of Russian troops ready to uphold the
Communist government against the opposition which would
otherwise have swept it away along with the whole system of
distinctive ideas which it imposed on its people.
185
Michael Polanyi
But this cannot either be the root of the matter. It leaves
unexplained how the power of Communist governments origin-
ally came into existence at the centres from which it sub-
sequently spread to other parts of the world. And it leaves
unexplained also how a system of ideas, in many ways similar
to that of Communism, had established, less than twenty years
earlier, the equally oppressive rule of National Socialism all
over Germany.
We must face the fact that these disasters of the twentieth
century were primarily brought about by groups of fanatics who
gained influence over broad masses. We must recognize indeed
that these ideas so different from our own, which President
Kennedy met with in Vienna, are still echoing throughout the
planet and still gain adherents, particularly among the more
educated people. We must acknowledge that these people
embrace these ideas with fervent hopes for humanity, dedicated
to fight for them and to suppress any opposition to them.
The main difficulty in understanding the power of modern
totalitarian ideas is the habit of thinking of them in terms of the
conflict between progress and reaction. They are not part of the
struggle that has dominated men's minds since the Enlighten-
ment shattered Christian dogmas and the French Revolution
shattered feudalism in Europe. The revolutions of the twentieth
century are not in line with this conflict. They do not aim at
restoring either the dogmas or authorities against which the
Enlightenment and the French Revolution fought. They are
dogmatic and oppressive in an entirely new way which by a
strange logical process assimilates for its purposes the great
passions of scepticism and social reform which first achieved
free thought and popular government in Europe and America.
The biography of Karl Marx by Isaiah Berlin has a passage
which reveals this transmutation. It reads :
'The manuscripts of the numerous manifestos, professions of
faith and programmes of action to which he [Marx] appended Ms
name, ^ still bear the strokes of the pen and the fierce marginal
comments with which he sought to obliterate all references to eter-
nal justice, the equality of man, the rights of individuals or nations,
the liberty of conscience, the fight for civilization and other'
such phrases which were the stock in trade ... of the democratic
movements of Ms time ; he looked upon these as so much wortMess
cant indicating confusion of thought and ineffectiveness in action.*
186
A Postscript
Why did Marx so fiercely obliterate all references to justice,
equality and freedom from Ms manifestos? Because he believed
he had far better, more honest and intelligent grounds on which
to achieve these aims. He had written :
*It is not the consciousness of human beings that determines
their existence but conversely it is their social existence that deter-
mines their consciousness.'
To him, therefore 3 the revolution which would transform the
existence of society became the primary aim and a true embodi-
ment of his demand for righteousness. Even his own resolve to
fight for this revolution was disguised in the form of a scientific
sociology which predicted its inevitable approach, by virtue of
its immensely increased productive capacity.
Such an ideology simultaneously satisfies both the demands
for scientific objectivity and the ideals of social justice, by in-
terpreting man and history in terms of power and profit, while
injecting into this materialistic reality the messianic passion for
a free and righteous society.
The potency of this combination has its counterpart in the
weakness of the position confronting it : the position that v> e
ourselves are trying to uphold. Our scientific outlook conflicts
with our moral convictions, as it denies their objective justifica-
tion. Our most fervent beliefs falter on our lips as their authen-
ticity is questioned by our critical powers. Words like those of
Woodrow Wilson invoking the conscience of world opinion,
which once aroused Europe, sound hollow today. Our in-
tellectual conscience has driven our moral convictions under-
ground. But these antinomies which make the liberal mind
stagger and fumble, are the joy and strength of Marxism : for
the more far-flung are our moral aspirations and the more
severely objectivistic is our outlook, the more powerful is a
combination in which these contradictory principles mutually
,iinforce each other. We must face the fact that our own ideals,
though true and right, are cramped by an internal conflict and
tortured by a self-doubt which our opponents have eliminated,
by embodying their moral aspirations in a scientism which de-
fines their own power as the ultimate goal and moral purpose
of mankind.
Some contributors to the discussion of my paper have called
this hypocrisy. It is actually the inverse of it. Hypocrisy conceals
N 187
Michael Polanyi
lust for power behind a screen of moral professions ; but Bol-
sheviks silence their moral aspirations and identify them with
an unconditional support of Bolshevik power. They may some-
times sound sanctimonious, but their strength lies in being
frankly hardboiled. An analysis of the chief propagandists
writings of Lenin and Stalin shows that ninety-four to ninety-
nine per cent of the references to the Communist Party and its
activities describe it as seizing, manipulating and consolidating
power. 1
This, surely, is the inverse of hypocrisy. Its spearhead is
indeed to accuse our own society as hypocritical, for professing
ideals of truth, liberty and justice against which it often offends
and cannot help offending. I have described therefore the
structure of Marxism as a form of 'moral inversion 5 and under
this label I have classed it with other mentalities which have a
similar structure and are, moreover, rooted in the same his-
torical antecedents. 2 This kinship has been criticized in the dis-
cussion, as if it identified the political types linked by kinship.
But elephants and whales are both mammals and yet quite
different animals. Marxism and Nazism are also very different,
even though they have a similar. structure and spring from
common origins. Their kindred structurerhave different con-
tents; Marxism is a revolutionary utilitarianism, Nazism a
revolutionary romanticism. But their seductivity is of a similar
kind ; it lies in offering paths of intense political action to men
estranged by a moral rebellion armed with moral scepticism,
a combination which I have equated not without historical
reasons with nihilism.
I must digress here to impress on the reader that I have not in-
vented the problem which I am trying to solve here. Many authors
have seen it. It was brilliantly introduced by Roger Callois. 3
Marx and Engels, he says, built up their formidable theory for
1 See G. A. Almond: The Appeals of Communism, Princeton 1954, p. 22.
2 'Moral inversion' can be understood as a counterpart to Freudian 'sub-
limation*. 'Sublimation* designates the (alleged) transmutation of sexual libido
into nobler manifestations of the mind, while moral inversion refers to the
opposite transmutation of noble ideals into a quest for power and profit.
Accordingly, I regard Freud's theory of sublimation as an expression of the
same reductionist urge pervading our modern mentality, which, consistently
applied, led to moral inversion.
3 Roger Callois: Description du Marxisme (GaHiowd, 1950),
188
A Postscript
the purpose of concealing from themselves and others that they
were following the voice of their generous conscience, instilled
by an education which their theory unmasked as fundamentally
hypocritical. They transmuted their moral demands by uttering
them in the form of scientific predictions. J. Plamenatz 1
struggled with the same paradox and concluded "'Scientific
socialism" is a logical absurdity, a myth, a revolutionary slogan,
the happy inspiration of two moralists who wanted to be unlike
all moralists before them. 9 H. B. Acton 2 examines this logical
absurdity and hints at the origins of its convincing power : 'The
Marxist can derive moral precepts from his social science . . .
to the extent that they already form, because of the vocabulary
used, a concealed and unacknowledged part of it.' Carew Hunt 3
reveals this practice in the following quotation from Lenin:
'Morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society.'
The struggle for power is set up here as the ultimate criterion
of morality in words justifying this struggle by a moral con-
demnation of capitalism. The period of pre-Marxist Russian
nihilism in which moral passions were first embodied in the
revolutionary struggle for power is described by E. H. Carr 4 in
his biography of Bakunin. It was Nechayev, around 1870, who
took the final step of abandoning the romantic aspirations of
the previous generation and raising revolution to the status of
an absolute good, overriding any moral obligations. The en-
suing internal contradiction is analysed for Russian Marxism
by Bochenski. 5 Moral laws, he says, are appealed to and then
it is denied that any such laws exist. In describing the militant
mentality of the Soviets, Richard Lowenthal reveals its contra-
dictions in paradoxical terms. He speaks of an 'unconscious
and indeed fanatical hypocrisy [a] ruthless immoralism justi-
fied by the subjectively sincere belief in the millennial rule of
saints.' But how can hypocrisy, which is a pretence, be fanatical?
And how can it be also an immoralism that is, an open denial
of the ideas invoked by hypocrisy? Lowenthal joins issue with
me for rejecting the current description of the Soviet mentality
as a 'secular religion'. I regard this term as misleading for it
1 John Plamenatz: German Marxism and Russian Communism (1954), p. 50.
2 H. B. Acton: The Illusion of an Epoch (1955), p. 190.
s R. N. Carew Hunt: The Theory and Practice of Communism (1950), p. 80.
4 E. H. Carr : Michael Bakunin (1937), p. 376.
3 Bochenski: Der Sowietrussiche Dialektisck? Materialismus (1950), p. 156.
189
Michael Polanyi
might equally apply to any fervent patriotic or social movement
forming part of the liberal tradition which Is the primary
opponent of Communism. 1 The problem I want to face was
clearly formulated by Hannah Arendt: 2 'Bolshevik assurance
Inside and outside Russia that they do not recognize ordinary
moral standards have become a mainstay of Communist propa-
ganda . . .' An attempt to explain why this concealment of moral
purpose behind professions of immoralism is so stable and se-
ductive has recently been made by E. E. Hirschmatin: 3 'We
must realize that this disregard [of humanitarian Idealism] has
been a source of strength not of weakness. For because men in
their moral professions have for so long not meant what they
said, because the moral will has not seemed a reality which men
could trust, therefore, by seeming to depend less on moral
profession and moral will, they seemed the more to mean what
they said and the more to rely upon realities.' Mr. Hirschmann
sees a kindred tendency underlying 'the greatest self-conscious
assault on humanitarian ideals yet seen in history, that of the
Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis'. Nearly forty years earlier Meinecke 4
had interpreted the tragic failure of Imperial German mentality
as due to the Idea that the only true morality of a nation was
1 The 'famous speech at Amsterdam on September 8, 1872' to which
Lowenthal refers as contradicting my statement that for Marx violence was the
proper aim of a scientific socialism is famous only because it is at variance with
the most emphatic statements of Marx to the contrary :
'The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly
declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all
existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic
revolution. '
Tills peroration of the Communist Manifesto was a million times more effective
as Marx's teaching than his speech in Amsterdam saying that in certain cases
socialism could be achieved constitutionally.
Lowenthal says that Marx has drawn up fairly precise outlines for his own
Utopia. The only text I can think of consists of a few vague pages in the
* Critique of the Gotha Programme* written as a letter to Bracke of which
Engels found a copy among his papers in 1891, nine years after the death of
Marx. On the eve of the Russian Revolution Lenin could find no other
Marxian basis than this document left unpublished for sixteen years first by
Marx and then by Engels for shaping the programme of the future society In
The State and Revolution (1917).
- Hannah Arendt: The Burden of our Time (1951), P- 301.
s E. E. Hirschmann: On Human Unity (1961), p. 124.
4 Meinecke: Die Idee der Staatsraison (1929), passim. Immanence is also
called here 'Monismus' and related to Hegel's *Identitatslehre > .
190
A Postscript
Immanent In its will to power. I think one could use the term
'immanent morality' instead of 'inverted morality' and I have
occasionally done so. But 'immanence 5 lacks the terrifying
overtones of 'Inversion 9 , as a state in which moral passions
are transmuted Into the hidden fuel of absolute violence.
The morally inverted mentality can be Individualistic, un-
political this I call nihilism. In my paper, 'nihilism' means
neither moral depravity nor moral indifference. Depraved in-
dividuals have often joined company with modern nihilists and
become instruments of the revolutions of the twentieth century.
But by themselves they could have only produced a crime-wave
not made revolutions. Their mentality Is poles apart from
that of the personage first identified as a nihilist by Turgenev
In Ms hero Bazarov. This character, which has made history,
represents the rebellious Russian intelligentsia of the 1860's
who repudiated all existing bonds of society in the name of an
absolute utilitarianism, of which they hoped that it would
liberate men and make them all brothers.
The romantic nihilism first propounded by Nietzsche in Ger-
many, was likewise a moral protest against existing morality.
'This shop,' writes Nietzsche, 'where they manufacture ideals
seems to me to stink of lies.' In place of this hypocrisy he sets
the noble ideal of ' something perfect, wholly achieved, happy,
magnificently triumphant, something still capable of inspiring
fear'. He finds it represented in Napoleon, 'that synthesis of the
brutish with the more than human'.
The beginnings of a nihilism associated with moral protest
go back further. Diderot speaks of it already in 1763 in Le
Neveu de Rameau whose immoralism justifies Itself by the
hypocrisy of society. Soon after, Rousseau made a monumental
declaration of moral Independence in his Confessions, exhibiting
his vices as nature's naked truth. And later in the century the
Marquis de Sade gave an account of his cruelty and lust, de-
riving intellectual and moral superiority for his acts from a
scientism which reduces man to a machine and a political theory
which denounces laws as the will of the stronger.
Owing to its moral and intellectual appeal, nihilism has served
as a cultural leaven throughout the past two centuries. A rebel-
lious immoralism has bred the modern bohemien in France and
the disaffected intellectual throughout the continent of Europe,
and these alienated groups have contributed decisively to the
191
Michael Polanyi
renewal of art and thought since the second half of the nine-
teenth century. In this cultural process the two kinds of
nihilism, the 'utilitarian' and the 'romantic', were interwoven.
But I shall pick out one thread of the latter kind which leads
us back to the social and political scene and to the romantic
branch of modern totalitarianism. The movement which in
France produced the boheme and in Russia the revolutionary
intelligentsia, found an even wider outlet in the German Youth
Movement. From small beginnings at the end of the nineteenth
century, it canie to comprise millions of boys and girls by the
end of the First World War. At a famous congress on the Hohe
Meissner Mountain in 1913, it dedicated itself to a fervent 'inner
truthfulness/ condemning existing morality as a bondage im-
posed by a corrupt society and affirming instead the romantic
values idealized by Nietzsche, Wagner and more recently
Stefan George. I remember no instance in which this youth
movement protested against the rise of National Socialism,
while there is evidence that it amply contributed to the ranks
of Hitler's supporters. The same romantic nihilism spoke as
follows on the rise of Hitler to power in 1934 through Oswald
Spengler: 'Man is a beast of prey . . . would be moralists . . .
are only beasts of prey with their teeth broken . . . remember
the larger beasts of prey are noble creatures . . . without the
hypocrisy of human morals due to weakness.' *
Nazi fanaticism was rooted in the same conviction of the
irrelevance of moral motives in public life, which Marxism had
expressed in terms of historic materialism, and which caused
Marx to eliminate furiously any appeals to moral ideals from
his manifestos. Fascists believed with Marx that such moral
appeals were but rationalizations of power. Hence their con-
tempt of moralizing and their moral justifications of violence
as the only honest mode of political action.
Such is the kinship between the ideas which gained fanatical
support among revolutionaries and broad influence on the
masses of our age. Such the convincing power of an inversion
by which scepticism and moral passions reinforce each other in
acting on minds whose moral convictions are hamstrung by
scepticism. Revolutionary regimes admittedly continue to rule
by oppressive violence ; but their immense efforts of propaganda
1 Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision (1934) quoted by Leslie Paul,
The Annihilation of Man (London, 1944), p. 128.
192
A Postscript
show that they rely on violence only in combination with the
power of their ideas.
Whether we are to fight or to submit to live or to die our
first duty must be to recognize the awful fact that these ideas
are highly stable and seductive. And we must face also the fact
that their force and seduction is not due at least not primarily
due to an evocation of evil instincts, but is gained by satisfying
in its own manner the same ideals which we ourselves hold and
which we are defending against their attack.
So much in answer of the first part of our question. It explains
how the world came to be where it is divided as it is.
Now the second part of the question : Where does the world
go from here? I must not respond to this without first making
clear some obvious limitations of any answer I may give to it.
The process of inversion which I have described has not taken
place everywhere this is precisely why the world is divided
today. Even many revolutionary regimes of the twentieth cen-
tury are untouched by inversion. Most of the new Asiatic and
African countries have achieved independence upholding the
traditional ideals of liberalism ; I cannot take into account here
the wide variety of conditions in these countries. Nor can I deal
in detail with the great differences between the Communist
countries, ranging from fanatical fury in China to the mere
ritual observance of Marxism in Yugoslavia. I can only suggest
that these differences be analysed in terms of the trends which
I am trying to identify. Finally, though I may tell which way the
world is going, I cannot prophesy where it will arrive,
I believe that the predominant trend of human thought in the
last ten years has been a retreat from the most extreme forms
of inversion. The belief that the rule of the Communist Party
embodies all the hopes of humanity, and that its very existence
is a full compensation for the fact that it does not fulfil them ;
that its successes should be ascribed to its peculiar excellence,
while its failure be always regarded as incidental this bias
which thrives on its own absurdity, by rendering itself totally
unapproachable to argument; this peculiar milieu of the
twentieth century which protects its own blazing credulity by
a steel armour of scepticism; this condition which is capable
of combining highest intelligence and morality in a teaching
which reduces them both to epiphenomena of power and profit
it is no longer as stable and seductive as it used to be,
193
Michael Polanyi
This has been no mere weakening due to lassitude. It was a
reaffirmation of truth and of morality and the arts, as intrinsic
powers of the mind that caused the leading Hungarian Com-
munist intellectuals to rebel against a regime which had
showered them with benefits. This reaffinnation was momen-
tous, not only because those who uttered it were abandoning
a place in the sun for the shadow of death, but because it was the
outcome of a bitter internal struggle in minds divided between
two irreconcilable conceptions of conscience. This liberation
and re-establishment of thought from its reduction to the func-
tions of ideology has been the mainspring of all revisionism
within the Soviet empire, and of the many defections from 'the
god that failed 9 throughout the world.
This movement took on many forms, because any conviction
that acknowledges the power of thought in its own right could
equally express it. The beliefs to which the modern mind turns
beyond nihilism, comprise all the main ideas which prevailed
before the descent into nihilism. In my paper I gave a list of
three, each defined by its historic past : nationalism, religion and
sceptical enlightenment. Today I would add two more, namely
romantic enlightenment and its descendant, modern existen-
tialism. But the list is inexhaustible. A man who has broken out
of prison might be found in any place to which he had access
before he was imprisoned.
Some of those criticizing nationalism or religion seem to have
thought that they were opposing my apologia of them. But I
had merely said that minds recoiling from nihilism sometimes
have done so by renewing their national or religious dedication,
and I have spoken in the same breath also of sceptical enlighten-
ment. I said that :
*. . . the sceptical mood of the enlightenment itself has been given
a new lease of life. The more sober pragmatist attitude towards
public affairs which has spread since 1950 through England and
America, Germany and Austria reproduces in its repudiation of
ideological strife the attitude of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists
towards religious bigotry.*
This was indeed the only path in which I saw a hope for the
future. 'Perhaps,' I said, 'the present recoil may be stabilized
by the upsurge of a more clear-sighted political conscience.'
And I quoted as an example the way religious conflict had even-
tually been overcome in England and America.
194
A Postscript
1 Civility prevailed over religious strife and a society was founded
which was dynamic and yet united. May not Europe repeat this
feat? May we not learn from the disasters of the past forty years
to establish a civic partnership, united in its resolve on continuous
reforms our dynamism restrained by the knowledge that radic-
alism will throw us back into disaster the moment we try to act
out its principles literally?'
I have repeated these words here in reply to Sidney Hook's
essay 'Enlightenment and Radicalism" in which lie too recom-
mends a return to Enlightenment as a cure to our age,
and curiously conveys this by a strong attack on my sup-
posed denigration of the ideals of Enlightenment. This is due
to the fact that lie identifies these ideals with the American and
British systems of continuous reform through self-government,
while on the other hand he thinks that 'the chief causes of the
Bolshevik and Nazi revolutions have very little to do with doc-
trinal beliefs. They are to be found in the First World War and
its consequences *. So when I say that the catastrophes of the
twentieth century were a manifestation *of a sceptical ration-
alism combined with a secularized fervour of Christianity* he
believes that I am attacking rationalism just as other authors
have thought that I am attacking Christianity; while I have
done neither.
In any case, whatever the proximate causes of our recent
revolutions may have been, I think Sidney Hook would agree
that their ideas, and the ideas represented by the Soviet govern-
ment in particular, are still powerful and menacing. My analysis
recognizes that they possess this force and seductiveness only
because they are deeply rooted in ideas which we share and
because we have also the same ancestry, which first laid the
twin burdens of scepticism and social morality on mankind.
If this is true, the impasse of completely different languages
of which President Kennedy spoke, may not be unbridgeable.
If the ideas so hostile to us derive their power from their kinship
to our own, we might recognize in them also our own problems.
We shall then make contact with the internal difficulties of the
Soviet mind which are leading it to revisionism. And we shall
no longer see this process then merely as a weakening of our
opponents, but recognize it as a struggle of minds like our own
against a predicament similar to our own. The revisionist who
breaks up the Marxist inversion of moral passions and recoils
o 195
Michael Polanyi
from its political immoralism, returns to our situation in which
objectivism conflicts with the claims of moral judgment. He
comes up then against our own problems.
A revisionist may expose the logical contradiction in Marxism
in terms very similar to those of the academic critics I have
quoted. Kolakowski says to the orthodox Communist :
'You do not let me measure your moves with a measuring rod
of absolute values because in your opinion such values do not
exist at all or are purely imagined. But on the other hand, you
yourself talk about all human values which must be absolute ;
thus silently you introduce into your doctrine axiomatic absolutism
in a vague and equivocal way in order to destroy it immediately
with "historical relativism"/ 1
And in him & Communist who has survived Stalinism this in-
sight is far more vivid than it is in us. Problems which to us are
speculative, are re-opened by him as wounds, seemingly healed,
that have started festering. This can teach those who take the
foundations of liberalism to be self-evident, that they are in fact
driven by a contradiction which only a faith more experienced
than ours can validly transcend.
The problem of modern man is then everywhere the same.
He must restore the balance between his critical powers and his
moral demands both of which are more relentless than ever.
This may be the starting-point for a movement of intellectual
solidarity between the civilizations arising beyond nihilism and
the lands which have been spared the political consummation
of nihilism. The common ground of this movement would over-
come the division of the two mutually exclusive languages and
might eventually guide our statesmen to find a way to co-
existence and joint progress.
1 L. Kolakowski, * Responsibility and History*, Nowa Kultura, September 1,
1957, Warsaw, Quoted by East Europe, December 1957, p. 12.
196
KATHLEEN BLISS : General Secretary of the Church of England Board
of Education, Research Officer of Talks Department, B.B.C., editor
of The Christian News-Letter. Author of The Service and Status of
Women in the Churches.
ENZO BOERI : Director of the Institute of Human Physiology at the
University of Ferrara, Italy; Biologist at the National Research
Council of Naples University. Has published various scientific
articles in Italy, France, England and the United States.
FRANgois BONDY: Swiss essayist and journalist, Director of Publica-
tions of the Congress for Cultural Freedom.
A. K. BROHI : Pakistani jurist, High Commissioner for Pakistan in
India. Has published An Adventure in Self-Expression and Funda-
mental Law of Pakistan.
FRANCOIS FEJTO: Journalist and writer, commentator on foreign
policy at Agence France Presse. Author of Printemps des Peuples,
Histoire des Democraties Populaires, Dieu et son Juif, etc.
PIETER GEYL : Professor of History at the Universities of London and
Utrecht up to 1958, author of many historical works, among which
Use and Abuse of History, Revolt of the Netherlands, etc.
HELMUT GOLLWITZER : Professor of Theology at the Free University
of Berlin; author of Die christliche Gemeinde in der Politischen
Welt, Die Christen unddie Atomwaffen.
INGEMAR HEDENIUS : Professor of Philosophy at Uppsala University,
author of Sensationalism and Theology in Berkeley^ Philosophy,
Studies in Hume's Ethics, On Law and Morals, In Search for a Fiew of
Life and other works.
RICHARD HENSMAN: Singhalese writer and journalist, Research
Secretary for the Overseas Council, London, and editor of Com-
munity.
JEANNE HERSCH: Professor of Philosophy, University of Geneva.
Author of U Illusion philosophique, Ideologies et Rgalite, etc.
WALTHER HOFER: Professor of Political Science at the University
of Berne. Has published important collections of documents on the
history of the Third Reich: Deutsche Geschichte, 1933-1939 and
Dokumente des Nationalsozialismus, which have been translated into
English, Italian and Japanese.
197
Biographical Notes
SIDNEY HOOK: Professor of Philosophy at New York University.
Author of From Hegel to Marx, Education for Modern Man, Heresy
Yes Conspiracy No, Political Power and Personal Freedom, etc.
ALBERT HOURANI : Professor of Modern History of the Near East ;
Fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford. Has published various
books on the problems of the Arab world, such as Syria and Lebanon
and Minorities in the Arab World.
PAUL IGNOTUS: author and journalist, senior editor of Irodalmi
Ujsag (The Hungarian Literary Gazette, London). Has published
a number of books, among which La Responsabilita degli Intellettuali
and Political Prisoner.
FRODE JAKOBSEN : Member of the Danish Parliament ; author, among
other works, of Europe and Denmark, The European Movement and
the Council of Europe.
K. A. JELENSKI : Polish essayist and literary critic now living in Paris,
author of La Realta DelYottobre Polacco, has contributed articles to
Encounter, Partisan Review, Preuves, Der Monat, etc.
HANS KOHN : Professor of History at City College, New York. Author
of numerous books, among which The Mind of Germany, Is the
Liberal West in Decline?
TKEODOR LOT: Professor of Philosophy. Between Erkenntnis und
Leben, published in 1923, and Fuhren oder Wachsealassen, pub-
lished in 1960, has written a considerable number of essays and
philosophical works of which the best known is Hegel. He taught
for several years in Eastern Germany.
KARL LOEWITH : Professor at Heidelberg University. Has published
numerous works, among which From Hegel to Nietzsche, Meaning in
History and Wissen, Glaube undSkepsis.
RICHARD LOWENTHAL : Professor of Political Science, Fall University,
Berlin. Journalist and writer, frequent contributor to The Observer.
HERBERT LUTHY : Professor of History at the Swiss Federal Poly-
technical School. After Montaigne (essays), published in 1953, and
A VHeure de son Clocher (essay on France), has published an
important book on The Protestant Bank in France from the Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes to the Revolution.
SALVADOR DE MADARiAGA : Spanish statesman and former Ambas-
sador, now living in exile. He is the author of numerous books on
history and political science, among which the most important are :
Spaniards, Englishmen and Frenchmen, Spain, an essay on contem-
porary history, Christopher Columbus and Portrait of Europe.
CZESLAW MILOSZ: Polish poet, essayist and novelist, author of
The Captive Mind, La Prise du Pouvoir, Sur les Bords de VIssa, etc.,
now professor of Slavic literatures, University of California, Berkeley.
198
Biographical Notes
EHSAN KARACHI : Professor of Sociology at Teheran University. Has
published several works on the Middle East.
JAYAPRAKASH NARAYAN : Indian statesman, retired from active
politics in 1952 to join the Bhoodan (Land Gift) movement,
ROBERT OPPENHEIMER : Physicist, Director of the Institute for Ad-
vanced Study, Princeton, U.S.A.
JOSEF PIEPER : Professor of Philosophy at Miinster University. Has
written various books, amongst which Grundformen sozialer Spiel-
regeln, Was helsst Philosophieren? and Ueber den Begriff der Tradi-
tion.
MICHAEL POLANYI: turned to Philosophy after having been Pro-
fessor of Physics and Professor of Economics. Fellow of Merton
College, Oxford. Author of U.S.S.R. Economics, Money and Unem-
ployment (diagrammatic film), The Contempt of Freedom, Full Employ-
ment and Free Trade, Science, Faith and Society, Logic of Liberty,
Personal Knowledge, The Study of Man, etc.
RAJA RAO: Indian writer, came to Europe at the age of 19, studying
literature at the University of Montpellier and at the Sorbonne. He
published his first stories in French and English. His best known
book is The Serpent and the Rope.
RONALD SEGAL : the South African radical writer and journalist, is
now editor and publishet_of Africa South in Exile, published in
London.
HUGH SETON- WATSON : Professor at the London School of Slavonic
Studies. Author of several books on history and Eastern Europe, he
has recently published in London a book on the international situa-
tion, Neither Peace nor War.
ALTIERO SPINELLI : Italian publicist, delegate of the Congres du Peuple
Europeen, author of Manifesto dei Federalisti Europei, UEuropa non
cade dal Cielo, etc.
Micmo TAKEYAMA : writer, lecturer at the University of Tokyo, editor
of the magazine Jiyu.
ALEX WEISSBERG-CYBULSKI : physicist and writer, directed the
Kharkov Institute of Physical Research until his imprisonment
during the Soviet purges. His experience is described in Ms book
The Witches* Sabbath.
199
Index
I. Contributors to the Seminar
Bliss, Kathleen, 141-4, 149-50
Boeri, Enzo, 160
Bondy, Francois, 129-30
Brohi, A. K., 116-17
Fejto, Frangois, 71-3
Geyl, Pieter, 76-8, 117-19
Gollwitzer, Helmut, 152-4
Hedenius, Ingemar, 158
Hensman, Richard, 150-2
Hersch, Jeanne, 122 f., 165-75,
179-81, 182-3
Hofer, Walther, 114-16, 138f.
Hook, Sidney, 59-67, 135-6,
156-8, 177-9
Hourani, Albert, 101-7, 111-13,
136-7
Ignotus, Paul, 69-71
Jakobsen, Frode, 132-3
Jelenski, K. A., 1-13, 71
Kohn, Hans, 73 f., 113-14
Litt, Theodor, 79-81, 130-2
Lowenthal, Richard, 37-57, 133-5
Liithy, Herbert, 85-99, 109-11,
137-8
Madariaga, de Salvador, 75-6
Milosz, Czeslaw, 123-5
Naraghi, Ehsan, 125 f.
Narayan, Jayaprakash, 154-6
Oppenheimer, Robert, 1 60 f.
Pieper, Joseph, 145-8
Polanyi, Michael, 17-35, 69, 74-5,
185-96
Rao, Raja, 182
Segal, Ronald, 162f.
Seton- Watson, Hugh, 119-22,
163 f.
Spinelli, Altiero, 126-8
Takeyama, Michio, 78-9
Weissberg, Alex, 161 f.
//. General Index
Acton, H. B., 189
Affluence, and dehumanization,
153
Africa :
linguistic division in, 122
nationalism in, 90, 97 f., 1 15, 120
nationalism and State in, 128
Aggression, disguised, 50
Albania, 25
Algeria, 90, 94, 121
Almond, G. A., 188n.
America :
humanism in, 25
and nationalism, 95, 115, 136
sovereignty in, 76
see also New England
American Revolution, 21
Amoralism, medieval, 44 f.
Anabaptists, 45
Angola, 109
Anti-clericalism, 164
Antinornianism, 44
Archetypes, 85
Arendt, Hannah, 190
Arguments, 8
Aristotle, 135
Augustine, St, 178, 180
Austria :
decline of dynamism in, 31
nationalism in, 134
Authority,
collapse of traditional, effects of,
47 if.
and nationalism, 127
rejection of, 19
Bakongo, 109
Bakunin, Michael, 19, 40, 43, 45,
189
201
Index
Balkanization, 99
Baltic States, 124
Balubas, 109
Bantu, 122
Barth, Karl, 178-9, 181
de Beauvoir, Simone, 29 f.
Becker, 78
Belgium, 119
Bentham, Jeremy, 27, 60, 61 , 64
Berdyaev, 41
Beria, 54
Berlin, Isaiah, 186
Berlin Conference (I960), 1
Bernstein, 62
Bessarabia, 88
Bochenski, 189
Body, freedom and the, 182
Bolsheviks, rise to power, 61
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 141-3
Borgias, 161
Bossuet, 19
Boswell, James, 22
Britain :
decline of dynamism in, 31
19th-century, 24
unification of, 93 f.
see also England
Buddhism, 49, 151
Burke, 64
Byron, 25
Callois, Roger, 188
Carr, E. H., 189
Castro, Fidel, 9
Categories, 19th-century, obso-
lescence of, 13
Cellini, Benveunto, 22
Centralism, democratic, 7
Ceylon, 151
Chamberlain, Houston S., 61
Change:
failure of adaptation to social,
51 f.
historic, experience of, 3, 46
Chernyshevsky, 43
Chiliasm, medieval, 5, 18, 40
China, 78
Communist, 10, 55, 193
as example to new states, 107
Christianity, 141-2, 152 if.
And freedom, 145 ff.
and other religions, 152
and secular morality, 47 ff.
and society, 18, 20
Churchill, Winston, 63
Class, and individual, 167
Cohesion, contemporary forces of,
113
Cohn, Norman, 18, IP, ^4ff.
Colonies, independence of, 97
and nationalism, 109 f., 116
Commitment, 150
Communism, and
Christianity, 153
effects of inwardness, 168 f.
experienced, 179
faith, 174, 178, 180, 182
idea and reality of, 146
inward and outward, 154
irrationalism, 69 f., 80
misuse of, 146
nationalism, 96 IF.
nihilism, 2
Polish intelligentsia and, 71
religion and, 145 ff.
science and, 166
three types, 177, 180
Comte, Auguste, 74
Condorcet, 19
Congo, 86 f.
Belgian, 109
Congress for Cultural Freedom, 1
Connections, interpersonal, 169
Conscience, obedience to, 146
Co-operatives, 124
Counter-Reformation, 47, 48
Croats, 88
Cuba, 9
Declaration of Independence,
American, 159
Degeneration, moral, of civilized
man, 19
Dehio, Ludwig, 129
Democracy, 3, 46
and nationalism, 91, 92, 95
Dery, Tiber, 70, 71
Determinism, 81, 177
202
Index
Development, and independence,
106 f.
Diderot, 191
Discussion, methods of, 171 ff.
Disputes, territorial, 106
Dissent^ 8
Doctors, Kremlin, 31, 54
Dogma, decline of, and morality,
47 ff.
Dostoievsky, 28, 29, 40, 101, 169
Dutch Reformed Church, 162 f.
Duty, and religious belief, 158
Dynamic societies, two kinds, 4
Dynamism,
receding, 10, 24
waxing and waning of, 31
Economic development, ideology
of, 106
Education :
adult, 172 f.
and commitment, 150
nationalistic, 92
Egypt, 107, 112
Empires, disintegration of, 101 f.
Engels, R, 41, 129, 188
England, 2
inimitability of, 94
and nationalism, 93
religious wars, 35
see also Britain ; logic, lack of
Enlightenment, 2, 4, 21, 33, 60 f.,
64ff., 74, 186, 195
Enthusiasm, 61
Equality, Christianity and, 152
Europe :
Eastern, and Soviet imperialism,
138-9
Germany and, 132
secret of its strength, 104, 112
Western, expansion in 19th cen-
tury, 104
Evil, problem of, 25
Excesses, moral, 17 ff.
Existentialists :
French, 38, 40
and human nature, 147
Extra-sensory perception, 149
Extremists, reasons for victories of,
56
Fanaticisms (s),
and religion, 30
secular, 2, 3 ff.
Fascism :
and nationalism, 110
as nihilism, 2
Fatherhood of God, 155, 157
Fear, displacement of, 169
Federalism, 111, 123, 134 f., 136
Feuerbach, 157
Fisher, H.A.L., 116
Flanders, 119, 138
Fourier, 5, 33
France, 9, 77
and Algeria, 121
and French nation, 128
post-Revolutionary, 53
see also French Revolution
Francis, St, 22
Frederick the Great, 22
Freedom :
adventitiousness of, 146, 148
Christian meaning of, 159
Free Spirits, 44, 45
Freethinkers, and idealism, 158
French Equatorial Africa, 109
French Revolution, 21, 26 f., 31
69, 76, 92, 94, 101, 186
and nationalism, 127
Frontiers and nationalism, 131
Function, man's, 167
Galileo, 160
Gaulle, de, 127
Geneva, 92
Gentile, Giovanni, 46
George, Stefan, 192
Germany, 79 ff., 114, 185, 192
decline of dynamism in, 31
East, 1953 rising, 97
failure of integration in, 129
immoralism in, 25
language and nationalism in,
129 f.
reasons for totalitarianism in, 74
Gibbon, 20, 64
203
Index
Gimes, Miklos, 71 f.
Girondins 5 127
Greece, revolt, 102
Gregory VII, 18
Gurian, Waldemar, 41
Hay, Gyula, 32
Hayek, F. A., 27 n.
Health, 'Idea' of, 147
Hegel, 30, 64
Helvetius, 27. 92
Herder, J. G., 131
Hinduism, 154f.
Hirschmann, E. E., 190
History :
man's relation to, 170 f.
philosophy of, 171
two chapters in, 116
Hitler, Adolf, 26, 61, 192
Hobbes, 20 f., 25, 177
Hoffmann von Fallersleben, 130
Holland, 77, I18f., 133 f.
Holmes, O. W., 135
Human nature, existentialism and,
147
Humanity, love of, 27
Hume, David, 25, 61, 64
Hungary :
Catholicism in, 98
Communism in, 72
nationalism in, 98 f.
revisionism in, 6 ff.
rising of 1956, 1,97, 120, 124, 147
see also intelligentsia
Hunt, R. N. Carew, 189
Hypocrisy, 187ff.
of the West, 75
Idealism :
ethical, and faith, 158
moral, 73
Ideology (-ies) :
development of, 24
end of, 2 f., 6 ff.
and post-revolutionary exhaus-
tion, 53 f.
Immanence, 174f., 178
Immoralism :
in Germany, 30
personal, 22, 27, 30
Imperialism :
English, 94
Soviet, 138-9
Independence, sequelae of, 105 f.
Independentism, 116
India, 89, 107
Individualism :
romantic, 25
Rousseau and, 23
Industrialization, 185
Inquisition, 146, 161, 162
Instinct, and rationalism, 79
Institutions :
religious, and faith, 174
social, and gradual reform, 60
Insularity, English, 93 f.
Integration, nationalism and, 111,
114
Intelligentsia :
and contempt for Enlighten-
ment, 74
Hungarian, revolt of, 32 f., 38 f.,
54 f., 194
revisionism and, 9
Intolerance, and secularism, 163 f.
Inversion, moral, 4, 26, 29, 34,
37 f., 45, 188
Iran, 125
Ireland, and England, 94
Iron Guard, 1 10
Islam, 49, 102
Italy, 114, 128, 129, 164
Japan, 9. 78
Jaures, Jean, 62, 77
Jung, C. G., 85
Kant, 157, 166, 179
Keita, Modibo, 90
Kennedy, President, 185, 195
Kerensky, A., 63
Kierkegaard, 178
Kipling, R., 168
Kirov, S., 54
Koestler, Arthur, 69
Kolakowski, Leszek, 8, 196
Korea, 9
Kossuth, L., 120
Krushchev, N., 54 f., 62, 70, 185
204
Index
Kun s Beta, 26
Labour camps, 38
Language, nationalism and, 88,
121 f., 134
League of Nations, 75
Legitimacy, search for principle
of, 112
Legitimation, nationalism and, 113
Lenin, V. I., 7, 26, 29, 38, 42 f.,
61 f., 70, 161, 189
Liberty, faith and, 178
Locke, 21, 25, 35, 60, 61, 64, 101
Logic:
English lack of, 25 ff., 47
4 suspended ', 94, 101, 107
Luluas, 109
Lutheranism, German, 49
Luxemburg, Rosa, 7, 125
MacDougall, W., 95
Macedonia, 88
Machiavelli, 22
Manessier, 173
Mann, Golo, 129
Mao Tse-tung, 26
Marcel, Gabriel, 142
Maritain, Y., 64
Marriage, 168
Marx, Karl, 5, 29, 38 ff., 129, 186 f.
192
Marxism (-Leninism), 28 f., 72,
188 f.
and Bolshevik victory, 61 f.
and history, 171
Polish, 71
and revisionism, 73
Mass society, 8
Mau Mau, 95
Meinecke, H., 30, 190
Messianism :
of Hebrew prophets, 17
Lenin's, 42 f.
new, in Asia and Africa, 10 f.
political, para-religious, 5
science and, 4
and violence, 41 f.
Metternich, 135
Mill, J. S., 177
Millennium, 5 9 9
Milosz, Czes!aw 9 71
Minorities, national, 88
von Moltke, Heimuth, 142 f., 145
Montesquieu, 24
Morality :
bourgeois, double basis of at-
tack on, 40
immanent, 190 f.
intensification of, 4
internaiization of, 48 f., 57
Marxism and, 187 ff.
Morley, 25 f.
Mussolini, 40
Nagy, Imre, 70, 71
Napoleon, 191
Narodnaya Volya, 42, 43
Narodniks, 72
Nation,
birth of concept, 91
concept of the, 86, 134
definition, 109 f., 133 f.
Nationalism :
African and Asian, 113 f., 117
and authority, 127
and colonial independence,
109 ff.
in Communist world, 110, 114
English attitude to, 93
Flemish, 119
German, 129 f.
inter- war, 115
meaning of, 86, 93
meaning in Europe, 124
Middle Eastern, 125
moral neutrality of, 136
in Near East, 103 f.
peasant, 124
popular, 107
postulates of, 96
as principle of integration, 111,
114
pros and cons of, 104 ff.
purposes of, 126
rehabilitation of, 11 f., 85 ff.
revolutionary, 101 ff.
Soviet attitude to, 120 f.
Nature, observation of, 152
205
Index
Nazism, 186
and Marxism, differences, 188
and rnillenarianism, 5, 52
and 'moral inversion', 45
and nationalism, 1 10
reasons of rise to power, 63
Nechayev, 28, 38, 40, 42, 43, 189
New England, 95
New Left Review, 8
Newton, 19
Nietzsche, 19,28, 38,40,45, 191, 192
Nihilism, 41
idealization of, 28
as moral excess, 17 ff.
in Russia, 43
Ottoman Empire, 101 ff.
Pakistan, 89
Palestine, 106
pan-Slavism, 98
* Party, the 5 , function of, 42
Passion, moral, 17 f., 50 f.
Pasternak, 31, 34
Patriotism, and nationalism, 126 f.
Paul, St, 157, 178
Perfection, and creativeness, 173
Petofi society, 32
Philippines, 132f.
Philosophical ideas,
and conduct, 64
influence on history, 59
Pisarev, 43
Plamenatz, J., 189
Poland :
Catholicism in, 98
and Germany, 129
and Ireland, contrast, 94
nationalism in, 98 f., 124 f.
revisionism in, 6 ff.
rising of 1956, 1, 32, 97, 147
see also Intelligentsia
Popper, Karl, 9
Populists, Hungarian, 72
Portugal, 129
Power, as ideological aim, 42
Predictability, scientific, of change,
3,46
Progress, belief in, 166
Proletariat, as Messiah, 41
Propaganda, and psychology, 79
Prophets :
Hebrew, 18
task of, 149
Protestantism, 47 ff.
Psychoanalysis, and health, 147
Psychology :
lessons of, 66
and passions, 50
Pushkin, 25, 27, 124
Pushtunistan, 89
Racialism, 122
apocalyptic, 44
Radicalism, 2, 35, 59 ff.
Rakosi, 70, 72
Rationalism :
and irrationalism, 75
variety of meaning, 64
Reform, age of, 24
Reformation, 47, 116, 122
Religion ;
as counterpoise to State, 151 f.
and freedom, 145 ff.
liberalism and, 34
Polish revisionists and, 7
secularization of, 5, 47 ff.
technology and, 149
Religious institutions, role of, 150
Renaissance, 47
Responsibility :
increased sense of, 165 f.
naturalism and, 132 f.
Return of the repressed, 50
Revisionism, 1, 33 f.
and end of ideologies. 6 ff.
Hungarian, 70
Polish, 71
Polish and Hungarian, 6 ff,, 72 f.
Yugoslav, 73
Revolution, total, ideology of, 26
Rheinfelden Congress (1959), 4
Rights of Man, Declaration of, 21,
159
Rimbaud, 182
Robespierre, 26 f., 29, 39
206
Index
Romanticism, 22
and Nationalism, 30
and National Socialism, 79
Rosenberg, Alfred, 61
Rousseau, J. J., 3, 5, 19 ff., 37, 46,
64, 74, 9! f., 191
Royal Society, 19
Russell, Bertrand, 67
Russia :
causes of revolution, 62 f.
decline of ideological dynamism
in, 31 f.
nihilism in, 43
patriotism in, 1 14
religion and moraity in, 49
Sade, Marquis de, 29, 38, 40, 191
Saint- Just, 26
Saint-Simon, 5
Salon and workshop, 173
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 142, 147, 168
Scandinavia, 48, 129, 135
Schmitt, Karl, 46
Schwarz-Bart, 174
Science :
and freedom, 166f.
lessons of, 65
natural and social, comparisons,
166 f.
and sociology, 27
Secularism, positive value of, 151
Secularization, 3, 46
effects of, and morality, 47 IF.
18th-century, 19 ff.
intellectual, 24
Security, social, 170
Self:
emancipation of, 151
withdrawal of, 167f.
Self-determination, 89, 115, 135
Slovaks, 88
Social Contract, 20
Social engineering, 178
piecemeal, 9
Socrates, 180
South Africa, 162f.
Sovereignty, 76
Soviet Central Asia, 121
Soviet Union:
erosion of ideology in, 53 f.
future development, 8
see also Russia
Spain, 74, 129, 164
Spencer, Herbert, 40
Spengler, Oswald, 192
Stalin, J., 28, 31, 38, 43, 55, 114
State:
and nation, 128 5 134
religion as counterpose to, 151 f.
Switzerland, 74, 90, 91, 115, 135
Symbols, and human relation-
ships, 168
Taborites, 45
Talmon, J. L., 5, 10, 26 f., 41, 46,
163
Technology, and religion, 149
Theory and practice, in English
politics, 25
Thomas Aquinas, St, 146, 157
Thorbecke, 77
Thucydides, 22
Tibet, rising in, 97
Tito, 31, 55
Titoism, 97
Totalitarian ideas, reasons for
power of, 186
Totalitarianism :
and disappearance of religion,
163
ideology of, 3, 41 f.
nation-State and, 128
and violence, 41 f.
Toure, Sekou, 90
Toynbee, Arnold, 64, 152
Tradition, and nationalism, 90
Transylvania, 88
Trotsky, 63
Truth, and religion, 157
Tunisia, 107
Turgenev, 27 f,, 43, 191
Turkey, 9
see also Ottoman Empire
Ukraine, 124
Ukrainians, 88
Undeveloped countries, 55
207
Index
United Nations, 110, 115
United States, see America
Utilitarianism, 27
Versailles, Treaty of, 134
Violence :
ideological attitudes to, Com-
munist and Nazi, 38
Marx and, 39
Messianic, as means and end, 26,
41 f.
passive, 75
and scientific socialism, 28 f.
Voigt, F. A., 41, 45
Volonte generate, 46
Voltaire, 9, 19, 20, 22, 34, 61, 64,
74,78
Wagner, R., 192
War, Communist opposition to, 63
Wazyk, Adam, 33
Weber, Max, 9
Wilson, Woodrow, 95, 187
World War I, 6, 62 f., 88, llOf.,
128, 195
Worsley, Peter, 18 n.
Youth movement, German, 192
Yugoslavia, 193
revisionism in, 73
Zhdanov, 54
208
CD;
2:3
130191